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THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 


^2$ 


"Ittational  treasures 


THE   NATIONAL   GALLERY 


Uniform  with  this  volume 

THE  LOUVRE 

By  E.  E.  Richards 

Other  volumes  are  in  irrejmxalion 


THE 

NATIONAL  GALLERY 


BY 


J.  E.  CRAWFORD  FLITCH,  M.A. 

AUTHOR  OF   "  MEDITERRANEAN   MOODS,"  ETC. 


BOSTON 
SMALL,  MAYNARD  AND  COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS 


PRINTED   BY 

THE    RIVERSIDE   PRESS   LIMITED 

EDINBURGH 

1912 


N 

1070 


CONTENTS 


I.    THE    FORMATION    OF    THE    COLLECTION 
II.    THE    CENTRAL    ITALIAN    SCHOOLS       . 

III.  THE    NORTH    ITALIAN    SCHOOLS 

IV.  THE    DUTCH    SCHOOL 

V.    THE    FLEMISH    AND    GERMAN    SCHOOLS 
VI.    THE    SPANISH    SCHOOL     . 
VII.    THE    FRENCH    SCHOOL     .  .  . 

VIII.    THE    BRITISH    SCHOOL      . 


INDEX 


11 

27 

43 

57 

74 

92 

105 

116 

141 


494 

:t  dept." 


LIST   OF   ILLUSTRATIONS 


The  National  Gallery 


From  a  Drawing 


Frontispiece 


TO    FACE 

PAGE 

Botticelli 

.   Madonna  and  Child 

16 

Leonardo  da  Vinci  Our  Lady  of  the  Rocks    . 

17 

Raphael 

.  Ansidei  Madonna     . 

32 

Bellini 

.   Doge  Leonardo  Loredano 

33 

Titian 

.  Bacchus  and  Ariadne 

40 

Veronese 

.  Consecration  of  St  Nicholas 

41 

Correggio 

.   Madonna  of  the  Basket    . 

48 

Moroni 

.   Portrait  of  a  Tailor  . 

49 

Rembrandt 

.  An  Old  Lady  . 

56 

Rembrandt 

.   Portrait  of  Himself  . 

51 

De  Hooch 

.  A   Dutch  Interior    . 

64 

Frans  Hal 

s         .   A  Man's  Portrait    . 

65 

Hobbema 

.  The  Avenue     . 

72 

Van  Dyck 

.  Cornelius  van  der  Geest  . 

73 

Van  Eyck 

.  Jan   Arnolfini  . 

80 

Rubens 

.   Chapeau  de  Poil 

81 

Gerard  Da 

vii)     .   A  Canon  and  his  Patrons 

88 

Rubens 

.  Judgment  of  Paris  . 

89 

LIST   OF   ILLUSTRATIONS 


Holbein    . 

TO    FACE    PAGE 

.  Duchess  of  Milan   .         .         g6 

Velazquez 

.  Philip  IV. 

97 

Velazquez 

.  Venus  and  Cupid    . 

104 

Goya 

.  Dona  Isabel     . 

105 

Diaz 

.  Sunny  Days  in  the  Forest 

112 

BoUDIN 

.  Harbour  at  Trouville 

113 

Hogarth  . 

.   Marriage  a  la  Mode3  Sc.  2 

120 

Reynolds 

.  Lord  Heathfield 

121 

Gainsborough 

.   Mrs  Siddons    . 

128 

Lawrence 

.   Mrs  Siddons     . 

129 

Constable 

.  The  Cornfield 

136 

Turner     . 

.  Childe  Harold's  Pilgrimage 

137 

10 


THE    FORMATION    OF    THE    COLLECTION 

In  1831  some  justification  existed  for  Coleridge's 
sweeping  assertion  that  "  the  darkest  despotisms 
on  the  Continent  have  done  more  for  the  growth 
and  elevation  of  the  fine  arts  than  the  English 
government."  Most  of  the  great  European 
galleries — the  Louvre,  the  Hermitage,  the  Prado 
and  almost  all  the  galleries  of  Germany — had 
their  origin  in  the  collections  of  amiable  despots. 
They  were  thrown  open  to  the  public  by  the 
democratic  governments  of  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury, less  despotic  perhaps,  but  unquestionably 
less  amiable  so  far  as  art  was  concerned. 

The  British  National  Gallery,  like  most  typically 
British  institutions,  owes  its  existence  to  private 
enterprise  rather  than  to  the  initiative  of  the 
State.  It  is  said  that  the  idea  originated  with 
George  IV.,  but  while  it  would  be  heartless  to 
rob  that  monarch  of  any  title  to  the  gratitude  of 
posterity,   it  seems  probable   that    his   claim    to 

ii 


THE   NATIONAL   GALLERY 

have  been  responsible  for  the  foundation  of  the 
National  Gallery  has  little  more  basis  in  fact 
than  his  reputed  assertion  that  he  was  present 
at  the  battle  of  Waterloo.  The  suggestion  of 
forming  a  National  Collection  of  paintings  had  in 
fact  been  made  towards  the  end  of  the  eighteenth 
century.  The  times  were  propitious  for  such  a 
step.  Reverence  for  authority  in  art  was  then  an 
unquestioned  tradition,  and  all  aesthetic  dis- 
courses taught  that  salvation  was  only  to  be 
found  in  the  cultivation  of  "  the  sublime."  The 
sublime,  as  exemplified  in  the  works  of  the  old 
masters,  was  at  that  time  however  to  be  found 
only  in  the  houses  of  the  great  or  in  foreign 
galleries.  Those  artists  who  could  afford  it, 
such  as  Reynolds  and  Romney,  went  abroad  to 
begin,  rather  than  to  complete,  their  artistic 
education.  The  rest,  if  they  were  fortunate, 
might  get  a  glimpse  of  antiquity  in  the  gallery 
of  some  noble  collector.  Thus  the  influence  of 
Van  Dyck  upon  the  formation  of  Gainsborough's 
style  is  chiefly  due  to  his  study  of  the  Flemish 
master  at  Wilton  House,  the  seat  of  the  Earls  of 
Pembroke. 

Notwithstanding  the  obvious  need  for  a  National 
Collection    which    should    rank    with    the   great 

12 


FORMATION   OF   THE   COLLECTION 

galleries  of  the  Continent,  no  action  was  taken 
in  the  matter,  until  a  fortunate  chance  gave  the 
Government   its  opportunity.    One   of   the   most 
famous  collectors  of  the  eighteenth  century  was 
John    Julius    Angerstein,    a    Russian    who    had 
settled   in    England  at   the   age  of  fifteen  and, 
beginning    as    an    underwriter    at    Lloyd's,    had 
amassed    a    large    fortune    as   a    merchant    and 
banker.    He  was  a  generous  patron  of  the  arts 
and    had     formed    an    important    collection    of 
pictures  under  the  guidance  of  Benjamin  West 
and   Sir  Thomas  Lawrence.   In    1823  Angerstein 
died  at  the  age  of  eighty-eight  and  directed  in 
his  will  that  the   pictures  in  his  house  in   Pall 
Mall    should    be    sold.    They    numbered    thirty- 
eight    and     included    works     by    most    of    the 
great     masters — Raphael,     Correggio,    Veronese, 
Tintoretto,    Titian,     Rembrandt,     Rubens,     Van 
Dyck,  Claude,  Poussin,  Murillo.  They  formed  in 
fact  an  admirable  nucleus  for  a  National  Collec- 
tion,   and    a    demand    at    once    arose    that    the 
Government     should    purchase     them    for    that 
purpose.  Sir  George  Beaumont,  the  painter,  was 
keenly  anxious  that  the  opportunity  should  not 
be  lost,  and  while   Lord   Liverpool,  then    Prime 
Minister,  was  debating  the  matter,  he  is  reported 

13 


THE   NATIONAL    GALLERY 

to  have  gone  to  him  and  said,  "Buy  this  col- 
lection of  pictures  for  the  nation  and  I  will  add 
mine."  He  himself  was  the  possessor  of  a  notable 
collection  of  Claudes,  together  with  examples  by 
Rembrandt,  Rubens  and  Canaletto.   The  oppor- 
tunity  was    too   tempting    even    for    the    most 
rigidly   economic   statesman    to   refuse,   and   on 
23rd  March  1824  Lord  Liverpool  announced  to 
his  colleagues  that  he  had  decided  to  purchase 
Angerstein's    collection.    Sir    George    Beaumont 
kept  his  word  and  added  his  own.  The  sacrifice 
meant  much  to  him,  for  he  was  passionately  fond 
of  his    pictures  —  in    fact,    he    could    not    bring 
himself  to  part  with   his   favourite  Claude,  and 
asked  to    be    allowed   to    keep   it    in   his    own 
possession    until   his   death.    A   special   grant    of 
£57,000    was    voted    for   the    purchase    of    the 
Angerstein   pictures — a   sum  which  seems   alto- 
gether   insignificant    in     comparison    with     the 
amount  which  such  a  collection  would  fetch  at 
the  present  day. 

It  was  certainly  high  time  for  England  to 
begin  picture  collecting  if  she  was  to  secure  a 
fair  share  of  the  world's  art.  Already  the  national, 
or  more  strictly  speaking  the  royal,  collections  of 
the  chief  countries  of  Europe  had  a  start  of  a 

14 


FORMATION   OF   THE   COLLECTION 

century  or  two.  The  collection  of  the  Russian 
merchant  in  Pall  Mall  was,  after  all,  a  poor  thing 
when  compared  with  those  of  the  Louvre,  the 
Prado  and  the  Belvedere.  Even  after  consider- 
able additions  had  been  made,  Ruskin  called  the 
National  Gallery  "an  European  jest."  But  this 
lateness  of  time  at  which  England  entered  into 
the  race  was  not  without  its  advantages.  At  any 
rate  the  National  Gallery  began  with  a  clean 
slate.  Had  its  formation  been  undertaken  a 
century  earlier  there  would  without  doubt  have 
been  an  encumbering  heritage  of  works  collected 
in  an  age  when  the  history  of  art  was  little 
known  and  second-rate  painters  were  in  fashion. 
Many  of  the  Continental  galleries  suffer  from 
such  a  damnosa  hereditas.  In  1824,  however,  the 
day  had  gone  by  when  Guido  Reni  was  con- 
sidered to  rank  with  the  world's  greatest  masters 
and  the  works  of  the  Quattrocento  were  despised 
as  "Gothic."  The  spread  of  the  historical  spirit 
had  revolutionised  taste  in  art.  Hence  it  was 
possible  to  build  up  a  collection  representative  of 
the  history  of  painting  on  more  scientific  lines 
than  the  older  galleries  of  the  Continent,  and 
one  which,  unlike  them,  stands  in  no  need 
of  judicious  weeding.  As  regards  opportunities  of 


THE    NATIONAL    GALLERY 

purchase  the  time  was  highly  favourable.  Com- 
petition was  not  keen  and  prices  were  low. 
America  and  Germany  had  not  seriously  entered 
the  market  as  buyers.  The  decayed  nobles  and 
impoverished  convents  of  Italy  were  only  too 
ready  to  exchange  their  treasures  for  English 
gold,  and  there  was  as  yet  no  central  Italian  govern- 
ment to  forbid  the  sale  of  the  national  birthright. 
Such  good  use  did  the  directors  make  of  their 
opportunities  that  in  1888  Ruskin,  withdrawing 
his  remark  about  the  "  European  jest,"  pronounced 
the  National  Gallery  to  be  "without  question 
now  the  most  important  collection  of  paintings  in 
Europe  for  the  purposes  of  the  general  student." 
The  nation  having  secured  the  Angerstein  and 
Beaumont  pictures  in  1824  had  as  yet  nowhere 
to  put  them.  They  were  left,  therefore,  in 
Angerstein's  house  in  Pall  Mall  (occupying  a 
part  of  the  site  on  which  the  Reform  Club  now 
stands),  and  entrusted  to  the  care  of  a  modest 
establishment,  consisting  of  a  housemaid,  a  door- 
keeper and  two  curators,  presided  over  by  a 
Keeper  of  the  Gallery,  to  which  post  Mr  Seguier, 
a  picture  cleaner  and  restorer,  was  appointed. 
The  management  was  unmethodical  and  ill- 
organised.     Mr     Seguier     received    a     salary    of 

16 


M  VDONXA    AND   CHILD 
Botticelli 


Our  Lady  of  the  Rocks 

Leonardo  da  I  'inci 


FORMATION   OF   THE   COLLECTION 

£200  a  year  for  the  performance  of  a  number  of 
more  or  less  indeterminate  duties,  one  of  which 
was  "  to  be  present  occasionally  in  the  gallery," 
and  "a  committee  of  six  gentlemen,"  afterwards 
increased  in  number  and  designated  trustees,  was 
appointed  to  give  him  such  further  instructions 
as  circumstances  might  require.  All  responsibility 
seems  to  have  been  left  nicely  in  suspense  be- 
tween the  Keeper  and  the  Committee.  No  fund 
was    provided    for   the   purchase    of    pictures,  as 
all  future  buying  was  to  be  left  to  the  Treasury. 
The  outlook  of  a  gallery  whose  purchases  were 
to   be  made   by   politicians  advised  by  amateurs 
was  not  promising.  The  guiding  principle  of  the 
Committee   appears   to   have   been  a   determina- 
tion not  to  be  rash.   Their  policy  proved   to  be 
"  penny   wise,  pound  foolish."   Michael  Angelo's 
Taunton    Madonna    they     might    have    secured 
for  £500  ;  they  offered  £250  ;  twenty  years  later 
they  bought  it  for  £2000.   The  Garvagh  Raphael, 
for  which  they  refused  to  bid  more  than  £2000, 
was    subsequently    acquired    for  five    times    that 
amount.    During   the   first    twenty   years    of  the 
Gallery's   existence,  the   golden    age   for  buying 
old  masters,  only  twenty-five  pictures  were  bought. 
Donations  and  bequests  brought  the  total  of  the 

B  17 


THE   NATIONAL   GALLERY 

collection  up  to  nearly  two  hundred,  but  the 
stream  of  benefactions  diminished  as  the  market 
value  of  the  works  of  art  increased. 

But  in  spite  of  their  determination  to  hold 
to  a  safe  course,  the  Keeper  and  the  Committee 
between  them  managed  to  steer  the  institution 
into  stormy  waters.  In  1845  a  commonplace 
German  painting  was  bought  as  a  Holbein.  "  The 
veriest  tyro,"  sneered  Ruskin,  "might  have  been 
ashamed  of  such  a  purchase."  At  the  same  time 
a  drastic  cleaning  of  the  pictures  provoked  a  loud 
outcry  that  the  collection  had  been  ruined  by 
a  too  liberal  application  of  soap  and  water.  There- 
upon the  Committee  appear  to  have  come  to  the 
conclusion  that  the  best  way  to  avoid  mistaken 
action  was  to  cease  from  action  altogether.  This 
policy  was  the  most  disastrous  of  all.  It  led  to 
the  failure  to  take  advantage  of  the  most 
magnificent  opportunity  the  Gallery  ever  had — 
or  probably  ever  will  have — the  possibility  of 
purchasing  in  1848,  for  what  has  been  described 
as  an  insignificant  sum,  the  whole  of  the  pi'iceless 
Pitti  Collection  at  Florence,  with  its  sixteen 
Titians,  its  fourteen  Raphaels,  its  Rubenses,  Fra 
Bartolommeos,   Andrea   del  Sartos  and  the  rest. 

By   this   time   the    Government   had    acquired 

iS 


FORMATION   OF   THE   COLLECTION 

some  experience  of  the  working  of  an  art  institu- 
tion, and  in  1853  a  committee  was  appointed 
by  the  House  of  Commons  to  inquire  into  the 
general  system  of  management  and  the  relations 
between  the  Gallery  authorities  and  the  Treasury. 
The  result  was  that  the  cumbersome  system  of 
dual  control  was  abolished  and  all  responsibility 
for  the  choice  and  purchase  of  pictures  was 
vested  in  a  single  individual,  the  Director.  The 
trustees  were  maintained  as  an  advisory  board, 
with  a  view  to  forming  an  indirect  channel  of 
communication  with  the  Government  and  to 
keeping  up  a  connection  between  the  institution 
and  the  body  of  art  lovers  in  the  country.  But 
in  all  cases  of  difference  of  opinion  between  the 
Director  and  the  trustees,  respecting  the  purchase 
of  pictures,  the  decision  of  the  Director  was  to 
be  final.  Sir  Charles  Eastlake,  who  had  already 
occupied  the  post  of  Keeper,  was  appointed 
Director  for  a  period  of  five  years,  at  a  salary  of 
£1000  a  year.  An  annual  grant  of  £10,000  was 
provided  for  the  purchase  of  pictures. 

The  fortunes  of  the  Gallery  now  became 
dependent  to  a  large  extent  upon  the  personal 
judgment  and  taste  of  the  successive  experts  who 
presided  over  it.  On  the  whole  the  system  worked 

19 


THE   NATIONAL   GALLERY 

well,  although   inevitably  it  has  had  its   critics. 
Animadversions    have    been    directed    against    a 
certain  lack  of  catholicity  of  taste  on  the  part  of 
the  directors,  manifesting  itself  especially  in  an 
excessive  partiality  for   the   works  of  the   early 
Italian    schools,   and    a    certain    indifference    to 
everything  that  has  been  attempted  or  achieved 
in  painting  abroad  since  the   beginning  of  the 
eighteenth    century.    This  criticism    would   have 
more   weight  if  it   did  not  ignore  limitations  of 
time   and   money.    With   a  grant   of  only  a  few 
thousands  a  year  it  was   impossible  in  a  space 
of  ninety  years  to  forma  collection  completely 
representative    of    five    centuries    of    European 
painting.  It  was  a  fortunate  prejudice,  if  prejudice 
it   can   be   called,   which  led  the  first  directors 
to  build  up  the  Gallery  upon  a  broad  and  deep 
foundation  of  the  art  of  the  Italian  Renaissance. 
During   Sir   Charles   Eastlake's   administration 
the    gaps    in    the    Italian    section    were    rapidly 
filled    up,   one    hundred   and    sixty-four   pictures 
being    added    in    ten    years,    exclusive     of    the 
Turner  bequest.  During  the  administration  of  his 
successor,  Sir  William  Boxall,  the  Dutch  school 
received    an    invaluable    addition    through    the 
acquisition    of   the    Peel   Collection,    which    was 

20 


FORMATION   OF   THE   COLLECTION 

purchased  for  £70,000  by  the  Government.  By 
one  glaring  blunder  Sir  William  gave  a  striking 
demonstration  of  the  fallibility  of  the  expert.  In 
1866  he  bought  the  picture  known  as  Christ 
blessing  IAttle  Children  (757)  as  a  Rembrandt,  and  at 
a  Rembrandt  price,  £7000.  It  was  not  long  before 
the  painting  was  discovered  to  be  by  a  pupil 
of  Rembrandt,  and  apart  from  any  question  of 
technique  it  is  difficult  to  understand  how  a  work 
so  lacking  in  the  force  and  concentration  of  the 
great  Dutch  master  should  have  been  accepted 
as  his  without  any  hesitation.  It  is  probably  the 
worst  bargain  that  the  nation  ever  made. 

The  present  complexion  of  the  Gallery  is  due 
principally  to  Sir  Frederic  Burton,  who  held  the 
post  of  Director  from  1874  to  1894.  He  was  more 
catholic  in  his  taste  than  Sir  Charles  Eastlake  ; 
Italian  purchases  still  preponderated,  but  other 
schools  received  due  recognition.  His  boldest 
stroke  was  the  purchase  of  two  pictures  from  the 
collection  of  the  Duke  of  Marlborough,  Raphael's 
Ansidei  Madonna  and  Van  Dyck's  Charles  the  First. 
The  sum  paid  for  the  former,  £70,000,  would  hardly 
be  considered  sensational  in  these  days,  when  six- 
figure  prices  are  not  unknown,  but  at  that  time 
it  was  three  times  greater  than  had  ever  before 

21 


THE   NATIONAL    GALLERY 

been  paid  for  a  single  picture.  The  fact  is,  Sir 
Frederic  had  a  more  exact  knowledge  of  the 
aesthetic  than  of  the  commercial  value  of  painting, 
and  in  the  estimate  which  he  made  for  the 
Government  he  valued  the  two  works  at  ,£1 1 5,000 
and  £31,500  respectively.  "I  remember  once 
hearing  Mr  Gladstone  refer  to  this  matter," 
Sir  E.  T.  Cook  relates.  "  His  economic  conscience 
seemed  to  give  him  some  qualms  on  the  score  of 
the  unprecedented  price.  But  he  took  comfort 
in  the  fact  that,  large  as  was  the  price  actually 
paid,  the  price  asked  by  the  owner,  as  also  the 
valuation  of  the  Director,  was  very  much  larger. 
e  At  any  rate,'  he  said,  with  a  smile,  '  I  saved  the 
taxpayers  £45,000  on  this  Raphael,  by  nqt  listening 
to  the  advice  of  the  Director  of  the  Gallery.'  " 
On  account  of  this  purchase  the  annual  grant 
was  suspended,  and  when  renewed  it  was  reduced 
by  half,  to  £5000. 

When  Sir  Frederic  Burton  retired,  in  1 894,  Sir 
Edward  Poynter  was  appointed  in  his  place  by 
Lord  Rosebery,  who  took  the  opportunity  of 
remodelling  the  constitution  of  the  Gallery. 
He  considerably  circumscribed  the  powers  of 
the  Director,  practically  reverting  to  the  system 
in    force    from    1824    to    1853,    those    years    of 

22 


FORMATION   OF   THE    COLLECTION 

slow  growth  and  lost  opportunities.  Sir  Edward 
Poynter  was  succeeded  by  the  present  Director, 
Sir  Charles  Holroyd,  in   1906. 

The  building  in  Trafalgar  Square  in  which  the 
collection  is  now  housed,  designed  by  William 
Wilkins,  11. A.,  was  begun  in  1832,  and  opened 
to  the  public  in  1838.  Its  appearance  was  subject 
to  adverse  criticism  from  the  very  first,  and 
certainly  it  is  lacking  in  the  dignity  which  the 
importance  of  its  position  and  its  contents 
demands.  The  preposterous  dome,  which  was 
once  inhabited  by  the  students  of  the  Royal 
Academy,  and  the  ludicrous  "pepper-boxes" 
flanking  the  building,  serve  no  good  purpose, 
either  useful  or  ornamental,  and  might  with 
advantage  be  removed  or  modified.  Any  serious 
attempts  to  alter  the  facade  were  postponed 
owing  to  the  expectation  that  the  Gallery  would 
be  removed  to  a  site  farther  away  from  the  centre 
of  London,  where  the  atmosphere  was  less  smoky, 
as  the  Parliamentary  Committee  appointed  in 
1  853  recommended  ;  but  even  after  this  proposal 
was  vetoed  it  was  not  intended  that  the  present 
structure  should  be  left  as  it  is.  Various  designs 
have  been  submitted  at  different  times  embody- 
ing proposed  improvements,   but  these  have  all 

23 


THE   NATIONAL    GALLERY 

come  to  nothing,  and  it  is  unlikely  that  any 
change  in  the  external  features  will  take  place 
for  some  time  to  come. 

At  first  the  building  in  Trafalgar  Square  housed 
the  Royal  Academy  as  well  as  the  National 
Gallery.  In  1869  the  Academy  moved  to 
Burlington  House,  and  five  more  rooms  were 
made  available  for  the  National  Collection.  The 
number  of  English  pictures  however  had  so 
increased,  through  the  Vernon  gift  and  the  Turner 
bequest,  that  the  building  was  still  too  small  to 
contain  the  whole  collection,  and  a  new  wing  was 
erected  in  1876,  from  the  design  by  E.  M.  Barry, 
R.A.  This  addition  enabled  the  English  school, 
which  had  hitherto  been  exhibited  at  South 
Kensington,  to  be  removed  to  Trafalgar  Square, 
and  for  the  first  time  the  whole  collection  was 
united  in  a  single  building.  Further  enlarge- 
ments have  since  taken  place,  the  lighting  and 
decollation  have  been  greatly  improved,  so  that 
"these  melancholy  and  miserable  rooms,"  as 
Ruskin  called  them,  now  have  an  air  of  splendour 
and  dignity  which  is  worthy  of  the  mastei'pieces 
on  their  walls. 

In  1853  an  elaborate  inquiry  was  undertaken 
as   to  the  methods  of  the  arrangement  of  the 

24 


FORMATION   OF   THE   COLLECTION 

pictures  in  the  principal  European  galleries. 
Many  of  the  authorities  admitted  that  they  had 
no  other  system  than  a  general  intention  to 
secure  harmony  of  effect.  The  plan  which  was 
adopted  at  the  National  Gallery  was  the  satis- 
factory one  of  hanging  the  pictures  according  to 
schools  in  their  proper  historical  sequence.  The 
only  disadvantage  of  this  scheme  is  that  the 
elementary  principle  of  large  pictures  for  large 
rooms  and  small  ones  for  small  rooms  is  bound 
to  suffer.  It  also  renders  impossible  that  feature 
found  in  some  Continental  galleries — a  tribune, 
or  salon  carrc,  in  which  the  choicest  master- 
pieces of  the  collection  are  hung  side  by  side. 
This  concentration  of  the  masterpieces  of  all 
schools  and  periods  in  a  small  space  has  its 
convenience  for  the  tripper,  whose  idea  is  to 
"  do  "  the  gallery  in  the  minimum  of  time,  but 
the  system  has  nothing  else  to  recommend  it ; 
for,  as  Ruskin  affirmed  when  its  introduction  into 
the  National  Gallery  was  debated,  "under  such 
circumstances  pictures  rather  injure  each  other," 
and  certainly  every  picture  gains  in  interest  and 
significance  when  seen  in  conjunction  with  the 
works  of  the  same  school  which  preceded  and 
followed  it. 

25 


THE    NATIONAL    GALLERY 

The  only  alteration  in  the  annual  income  of 
the  Gallery  has  been  its  reduction  from  £10,000 
to  £5000.  At  the  same  time,  since  that  reduction 
was  made  the  price  of  pictures  of  world  impor- 
tance has  increased  enormously.  The  continual 
absorption  of  great  works  of  art  by  national  and 
municipal  galleries  restricts  the  supply,  while 
the  demand  grows  daily  in  almost  geometrical 
ratio  as  city  bids  against  city  and  millionaire 
against  millionaire.  The  £5000  a  year  which 
might  have  been  adequate  thirty  or  forty  years 
ago  is  now  insufficient  for  the  purchase  of  a  single 
first-class  work  of  art.  This,  however,  is  not  the 
place  to  discuss  the  problems  which  beset  the 
further  expansion  of  the  Gallery.  What  it  will 
achieve  in  the  future  must  depend  largely  on 
that  private  generosity  which  has  helped  to  make 
its  achievements  so  marvellous  in  the  past. 


26 


II 

THE    CENTRAL    ITALIAN    SCHOOLS 

The  underlying  assumption  in  Ruskin's  statement 
that  the  National  Gallery  is  "  without  question 
now  the  most  important  collection  of  paintings  in 
Europe  for  the  purposes  of  the  general  student" 
is  that  the  general  student  purposes  mainly  to 
study  the  art  of  the  Italian  Renaissance.  From 
the  Spanish  room  he  can  obtain  at  best  but  a 
partial  view  of  the  art  of  Spain  ;  from  the  French 
collection  he  receives  only  suggestive  hints  and 
whispers  of  the  glory  of  French  art  in  the 
nineteenth  century  ;  it  is  even  questionable 
whether  it  is  possible  to  realise  the  greatness  of 
the  English  school  of  portraiture  at  Trafalgar 
Square.  But  the  outstanding  feature  of  the 
collection  is  the  completeness  with  which  the  art 
of  Italy  is  represented,  from  its  first  stammerings 
in  the  Byzantine  dialect  to  the  large  majestic 
utterance  of  its  maturity.  And  in  this  extensive 
period  there  has  been  a  noteworthy  concentration 

27 


THE   NATIONAL   GALLERY 

upon  that  happy  dawning  time  of  the  Renaissance, 
when  the  world  was  seen  with  a  kind  of  childlike 
wonder,  when  gesture  was  fresh  and  unconvention- 
alised  and  the  but  half-successful  contest  with 
technical  difficulties  begot  an  exhilaration  which 
was  lost  in  the  later  facility  of  execution. 

The  interests  of  the  general  student,  however, 
do  not  altogether  coincide  with  those  of  the 
general  public.  It  must  be  frankly  admitted  that 
the  predominance  of  the  Italian  schools  in  the 
Gallery  is  a  little  bewildering,  and  not  always 
quite  welcome  to  the  casual  visitor.  From  those 
who  visit  the  Gallery  inspired  by  a  sense  of  duty 
rather  than  expectant  of  delight  it  is  not  un- 
common to  hear  disparaging  references  to  the 
monotony  of  "all  those  saints  and  martyrdoms 
and  crucifixions  and  things."  From  the  heights  of 
connoisseurship  it  is  easy  to  look  down  contemptu- 
ously upon  the  tired  Philistine's  rather  pathetic 
confession  of  boredom,  but  it  has  its  significance 
for  all  that.  It  is  undeniable  that  the  centre  of 
human  interest  has  shifted  since  the  Middle  Ages, 
and  consequently  the  subject-matter  of  the  arts 
has  changed  too.  The  Church,  under  whose 
tutelage  painting  grew  to  maturity,  made  a 
stupendous    effort    to   realise    its   doctrine    and 

28 


THE   CENTRAL   ITALIAN   SCHOOLS 

traditions  visually  through  art.  But  much  of 
what  was  once  of  vital  concern  to  the  individual 
has  lost  its  reality,  and  therefore  its  interest,  for 
the  modern  mind.  No  one  would  be  ashamed  to 
confess  that  he  finds  contemporary  politics  more 
absorbing  than  the  records  of  the  diplomacy  of 
fifteenth-century  Italian  states.  Why  therefore 
should  anyone  be  condemned  for  finding  a  greater 
interest  in  the  art  which  portrays  contemporary 
life  than  for  that  which  reflects  a  world  and  ideals 
which  are  remote  and  unfamiliar  ? 

Necessarily  a  survey  of  the  Italian  schools  must 
prove  wearisome  to  the  spectator  who  looks  at 
painting  merely  for  the  interest  of  its  subject- 
matter.  But  the  subject  is  merely  the  skeleton 
of  fact  which  it  is  the  artist's  business  to  clothe 
with  the  living  tissue  of  beauty.  Beauty  is  the  one 
supreme  interest  in  Italian  painting,  which  no 
revolutions  of  ideals  or  intellectual  interests  can 
ever  diminish.  As  the  present  Director  of  the 
National  Gallery,  Sir  Charles  Holroyd,  has  re- 
marked, "  Whatever  qualities  other  schools  may 
have,  and  their  qualities  are  many  and  of  the 
highest  interest,  beauty  is  the  prerogative  of  the 
Italian  school,  and,  since  we  have  practically  lost 
all  Greek  painting,  of  that  school  only."  In  the 

29 


THE   NATIONAL   GALLERY 

pictures  in  these  rooms  it  is  interesting  to  trace 
the  growing  preoccupation  of  the  painter  with 
beauty  for  its  own  sake  and  his  persistent  effort  to 
introduce  it,  if  even  at  times  by  a  kind  of  subter- 
fuge, into  the  subjects  which  his  ecclesiastical 
patrons  imposed  upon  him. 

In  the  vestibule  are  collected  those  works  of 
the  Trecento,  the  first  brilliant  period  in  the  art 
of  the  Italian  peninsula,  in  which  the  national 
genius  is  at  work  breathing  life  into  the  rigid 
traditional  formulas  of  Byzantine  art.  Necessarily 
they  are  not  numerous,  for  the  Trecentisti  were 
painters  of  frescoes  rather  than  of  panel  pictures, 
but  in  point  of  numbers  they  compare  favourably 
with  those  in  any  gallery  outside  Florence. 
Cimabue's  Madonna  (5&5)  presides  over  this  little 
group  in  its  sombre  majesty.  The  picture  has 
suffered  from  time  and  restoration,  the  face  in 
particular  having  been  damaged  by  the  destruc- 
tion of  the  surface  painting,  which  has  left  the 
greenish  undertones  exposed.  The  pose  still  con- 
forms to  the  stiff,  hieratic  tradition,  yet  already 
a  tremor  of  life  animates  the  figure,  quivering 
along  the  arm  to  the  finger  tips.  Based  partly 
upon  the  conventional  type  of  the  Byzantine 
ikon,  partly  upon  sympathetic  observation  of  the 

3° 


THE   CENTRAL   ITALIAN   SCHOOLS 

human  living  mother,  the  picture  is  full  of  dignity 
and  a  certain  archaic  charm.  Of  Cimabue's  greater 
pupil  Giotto  the  Gallery  possesses  no  original 
work,  but  his  influence  is  apparent  in  many  of  the 
works  of  this  early  school,  particularly  in  the  fine 
fragment  of  fresco  known  as  Two  Apostles  (276), 
a  study  of  two  mournfully  expressive  heads  bowed 
in  hopeless  grief.  The  Transfiguration  (1330),  the 
work  of  Giotto's  great  Siennese  contemporary, 
Duccio  di  Buoninsegna,  again  illustrates  the 
transition  from  a  petrified  tradition  to  an  art 
founded  upon  the  observation  of  life.  Here  we 
see  the  stiff  figures  of  the  ancient  shrines  assuming 
a  certain  freedom  and  expressiveness  of  pose,  and 
beginning  to  group  themselves  together  in  a 
natural  scene.  The  Byzantine  gold  background 
is  combined  with  a  rudimentary  attempt  at  actual 
scenery  in  the  rocky  mount. 

A  century  after  Giotto,  Masaccio  reincarnated 
the  genius  of  the  early  master  in  an  age  more 
propitious  for  the  arts.  The  absence  of  any  work 
from  the  hand  of  this  great  painter  constitutes 
the  most  serious  gap  in  the  whole  collection — a 
gap  which  it  will  be  extremely  difficult  ever  to  fill, 
as  practically  the  whole  of  his  work  is  confined  to 
the  two  churches   in   Florence  for  which  it  was 

3i 


THE   NATIONAL   GALLERY 

originally  executed.  Berlin,  however,  has  man- 
aged to  secure  three  examples,  and  there  are  still 
three  or  four  in  the  hands  of  private  owners,  so 
that  there  is  still  a  possibility  of  the  gap  being 
filled. 

Masaccio  was  not  the  sole  renovator  of  art  at 
the  beginning  of  the  Quattrocento,  for  he 
numbered  among  his  contemporaries  Fra  Angelico, 
Paulo  Uccello  and  Fra  Filippo  Lippi.  The  Gallery 
contains  one  excellent  specimen  of  Fra  Angelico's 
smaller  work,  Christ  surrounded  by  Angels,  Patri- 
archs, Saints  and  Martyrs  (663),  a  predella  detached 
from  the  altar  which  it  adorned  in  the  convent  of 
San  Domenico  at  Fiesole  and  sold  by  the  monks 
in  the  days  before  the  Italian  government  put  a 
stop  to  such  proceedings.  The  picture  is  a  vision 
of  the  heavenly  host,  radiant  as  a  rainbow,  sur- 
rounding the  risen  Christ,  who  is  in  a  literal  sense 
the  source  of  light.  The  delicate  miniature-like 
drawing  shows  the  influence  of  an  early  training 
in  illuminating  manuscripts,  while  the  serenity 
of  all  the  faces  reveals  the  temperament  of  the 
painter,  whose  ruling  sentiment  in  art  as  in  life 
appears  to  have  been,  "  God's  in  his  heaven — all's 
right  with  the  world." 

A    whole    world    of    emotion    separates    this 

32 


Ansidei  Maih inn  \ 

Raphael 


Dock  Leonardo  Lorkndano 

Bellini 


THE   CENTRAL   ITALIAN   SCHOOLS 

glimpse  of  the  departing  mediaeval  vision  from 
the  contemporary  work  of  Uccello,  known  as  The 
Battle  of  Sunt'  Egidio  (583).  It  is  remarkable  as 
being  the  first  Italian  work  in  the  Gallery  con- 
taining actual  portraits  and  the  earliest  attempt 
at  a  representation  of  a  contemporary  event.  In 
spite  of  a  certain  stiffness,  which  gives  the  effect 
of  stuffed  figures  arrested  in  the  midst  of  their 
mechanical  movements,  the  picture  conveys  a  real 
sensation  of  the  crowd  and  shock  and  resonance 
of  battle.  Very  effective  in  the  midst  of  the 
tumult  is  the  repose  of  the  young  helmet-bearer, 
to  whose  beautiful  medallion-like  head,  by  the 
way,  Swinburne  in  his  younger  days  is  said  to 
have  borne  an  extraordinary  likeness.  A  strong 
feeling  for  decoration  is  apparent  everywhere — 
in  the  long  raking  lines  of  the  lances  (inevitably 
suggesting  a  comparison  with  Las  Lanzas  of 
Velazquez),  in  the  gaily  streaming  pennons,  in  the 
captain's  marvellous  headdress  of  gold  and  purple 
damask,  and  in  the  burnished  globes  of  fruit  and 
the  wild  blossoms  on  the  hedge,  which  form  such 
a  happy  and  unexpected  incident  in  the  scene. 
But  even  greater  than  Uccello's  fondness  for 
decorative  effect  was  his  passion  for  perspective. 
The  science  had  then  all  the  fascination  of  a  new 

c  33 


THE   NATIONAL   GALLERY 

discovery,  and  the  painter  could  not  deny  himself 
the  pleasure  of  displaying  his  newly  acquired  skill, 
as  in  the  foreshortening  of  the  rather  uncon- 
vincing prostrate  warrior  in  the  foreground,  and 
the  arrangement  of  the  broken  lances  on  the 
ground  designed  to  show  the  mathematically  con- 
verging lines. 

The  new  spirit  which  inspired  Uccello — delight 
in  science  and   in   the   naturalistic  reproduction 
of  objects — worked  powerfully  in  the  two  brothers 
Pollaiuolo,  represented  here  by  the  Martyrdom  of 
St  Sebastian  (292).  It  is  obvious  that  the  painters 
were  not  particularly  interested  in  the   spiritual 
significance  of  the  subject.  The  saint  is  elevated 
to  the  top  of  the  picture  so  as  to  give    greater 
scope  for  the  display  of  the  fine  figures  of  the 
archers  in  the  foreground,  who  form  the  real  sub- 
ject.   Antonio    Pollaiuolo    was    the    first    painter 
seriously  to  investigate   the  science  of  anatomy, 
and  he  is  said  to  have  dissected  many  bodies  in 
the  pursuit  of  this  study.  The  result  of  his  labours 
is  manifest  in  the  beautiful  rendering  of  the  play 
of  muscle  in  the  arms  and  legs  of  the  archers  as 
they  stoop  and  strain  to  pull  back  the  cords  of  the 
crossbows.  A  landscape  of  subtly  harmonised  green 
tones  leads  the  eye  skilfully  back  to  the  remote 

34 


THE    CENTRAL   ITALIAN   SCHOOLS 

horizon.  Thus  by  a  division  of  interest  between 
the  muscular  figures  in  the  foreground  and  the 
delicate  beauty  of  the  distant  scene,  the  spectator 
is  induced  to  ignore  that  which  for  the  ecclesi- 
astical patron  who  ordered  it  was  the  essence  of 
the  picture,  the  martyrdom  of  the  saint. 

Of  Botticelli  it  has  been  said  that  we  have  no 
alternative  but  to  worship  or  abhor  him.  It  is 
certainly  a  fact  that  his  fame  has  been  subject  to 
remarkable  vicissitudes.  In  his  own  day  his  renown 
stood  high — his  name  alone  was  mentioned  by 
Leonardo  in  his  treatise  on  painting ;  then  he 
appears  to  have  lapsed  into  oblivion  until,  in  com- 
paratively recent  times,  Ruskin,  Rossetti  and  Pater 
began  to  sound  his  praises  with  all  the  enthusiasm 
of  a  new  discovery.  It  is  matter  for  congratula- 
tion, therefore,  that  the  National  Gallery  possesses 
at  least  four  undoubted  works  by  his  hand,  to- 
gether with  some  others  more  properly  ascribed 
to  his  school.  Even  those  who  are  unresponsive  to 
the  peculiar  fascination  of  this  painter  cannot 
but  admire  the  Head  of  a  Young  Man  (6L26),  un- 
attractive in  colour,  but  in  drawing  how  expressive. 

The  Mars  and  Venus  (915),  which  by  the  way 
probably  has  nothing  to  do  with  Mars  or  Venus  at 
all,  being  an  illustration  of  quite  another  legend, 

35 


THE   NATIONAL   GALLERY 

is  full  of  the  inspiration  of  the  early  Renaissance  ; 
the  drawing  is  somewhat  harsh  and  angular,  but 
it  must  be  remembered  that  the  picture  origin- 
ally decorated  a  space  over  a  door  in  the  Medici 
Palace,  a  fact  which  probably  had  an  influence  on 
the  design.  The  Nativity  of  Christ  (1034),  painted 
towards  the  close  of  his  life,  in  a  strain  of  mysticism 
and  devotion,  illustrates  in  the  draperies  of  the 
floating  angels  the  artist's  marvellous  suggestion 
of  movement  by  means  of  the  expressiveness  of 
his  line.  But  it  is  in  the  tondo  of  the  Madonna  and 
Child  (275)  that  the  individuality  of  Botticelli's 
well-known  types  is  most  marked.  Richter,  largely 
on  account  of  the  Child,  whom  he  finds  "  positively 
repulsive,"  is  disposed  to  regard  the  work  as  only 
a  school  piece,  but  the  weight  of  authority  is 
against  him.  Certainly  it  seems  incredible  that  any 
other  hand  than  Botticelli's  could  have  invested 
the  Madonna  with  that  haunting  look  of  wistful- 
ness,  almost  of  discontent,  the  like  of  which  we 
meet  in  the  work  of  no  other  painter.  For  Botti- 
celli seems  to  have  united  a  sympathy  with  the 
Christian  ideal  with  a  i*egretful  yearning  for  the 
old  pagan  past,  and  he  impressed  this  air  of 
divided  allegiance  even  upon  the  Blessed  Virgin. 
"  He  painted  Madonnas,"  said  Pater,  "  but  they 

36 


THE   CENTRAL   ITALIAN    SCHOOLS 

shrink  from  the  pressure  of  the  divine  Child,  and 
plead  in  unmistakable  undertones  for  a  warmer, 
lower  humanity."  Such  a  Madonna  he  has  painted 
here,  awed  by  the  "intolerable  honour"  that  has 
come  to  her.  And  this  perhaps  is  the  reason  why 
these  "  peevish-looking  Madonnas,  conformed  to 
no  acknowledged  type  of  beauty,  attract  you  more 
and  more,  aud  often  come  back  to  you  when  the 
Sistine  Madonna  and  the  Virgins  of  Fra  Angelico 
are  forgotten." 

The  one  picture  which  the  Gallery  possesses 
by  Leonardo  da  Vinci,  Our  Lady  of  the  Rocks  (1093), 
has  been  the  cause  of  some  contention,  as  an 
almost  identical  work  by  the  same  painter  exists 
in  the  Louvre.  The  authenticity  of  the  British 
version  has  been  disputed  by  some  critics,  but  the 
probability  is  that  both  are  the  original  works  of 
the  master.  Here  again  time  has  proved  to  be  the 
enemy  rather  than  the  ally  of  the  painter.  The 
ivory-black  which  formed  the  foundation  of  the 
painting  has  come  through,  throwing  the  whole 
picture,  with  the  exception  of  the  yellowish  high 
lights,  into  a  profound  shadow.  Thelandscape  from 
which  the  picture  takes  its  title  is  a  curious  fast- 
ness of  fantastic  rocks,  and  has  the  effect  of  in- 
vesting the  scene  with  a  mysterious   solemnity, 

37 


THE   NATIONAL   GALLERY 

withdrawing  it  to  a  remote  region  which  we 
scarcely  recognise  as  belonging  to  this  familiar 
earth.  The  kneeling  Virgin  rests  one  hand  on  the 
shoulder  of  the  little  John  the  Baptist,  while  an 
angel  supports  the  infant  Christ.  The  wonder  of 
the  picture  is  the  exquisitely  modelled  head  of 
the  Virgin,  with  that  indefinable  expression  char- 
acteristic of  Leonardo's  type  of  woman.  It  is 
not  an  actual  smile,  but  rather  a  benign  light 
upon  the  face,  which  seems  to  proceed  from  the 
possession  of  an  ancient  and  secret  wisdom. 

The  name  of  Michael  Angelo,  "  the  pupil  of 
nobody,  the  heir  of  everybody,"  stands  in  the  list 
of  the  Gallery's  painters,  but  unfortunately  only 
a  couple  of  fragmentary  works  answer  to  it,  and 
even  these  have  not  passed  unchallenged  as 
genuine  works.  Over  the  attribution  of  The  En- 
tombment of  Christ  (790)  the  critics  are  more  than 
usually  at  variance.  "There  is  no  doubt  what- 
ever," says  Sir  Edward  Poynter,  "that  this 
picture  is  the  work  of  the  great  master."  But 
according  to  J.  A.  Symonds  "  it  is  painful  to 
believe  that  at  any  period  of  his  life  Michael 
Angelo  could  have  produced  a  composition  so 
discordant,  so  unsatisfactory  in  some  anatomical 
details,  so   feelingless   and   ugly."    The   present 

38 


THE   CENTRAL    ITALIAN   SCHOOLS 

Director  of  the  Gallery  gives  his  verdict  that  "  it 
is  probably  a  much-repaired  original  that  was 
merely  begun  by  the  master,  who  left  it  in  the 
condition  of  outline  and  wash  that  we  see  in  the 
three  figures  of  women  and  the  landscape."  And 
similarly  in  the  case  of  The  Madonna  and  Child 
with  Angels  (809)  the  design  has  the  beauty  and 
grandeur  of  Michael  Angelo  himself,  while  the 
finish  of  the  hands  and  feet,  and  the  hatchings 
of  the  drapery,  are  probably  the  work  of  a  lesser 
hand. 

The  Umbrian  school,  less  intellectual  but 
possibly  more  graceful  than  the  Florentine,  is 
seen  to  better  advantage  in  the  National  Gallery 
than  anywhere  else  except  in  Umbria's  chief 
city,  Perugia.  The  aloofness  characteristic  of 
Piero  deila  Francesca's  work,  preventing  him 
from  being  definitely  placed  within  the  four 
corners  of  any  school,  will  be  noticed  in  his  two 
wonderful  pictures,  The  Nativity  of  our  Lord  (908) 
and  The  Baptism  oj  Christ  in  the  River  Jordan 
(()().")).  The  Nativityhas  the  spell  of  an  impersonal, 
almost  of  an  unemotional,  art,  distantly  suggestive 
of  that  of  Velasquez,  and  also  communicating  that 
sense  of  fresh  air  special  to  the  great  Spaniard. 
The    picture    is    wholly    free    from    the    narrow 

39 


THE   NATIONAL   GALLERY 

ecclesiasticism  which  oppresses  us  in  many 
renderings  of  religious  subjects;  it  has  the  fresh- 
ness of  an  original  conception  of  a  singularly 
poetic  mind.  In  all  the  Gallery  there  is  no  more 
beautiful  group  than  that  of  the  five  angels,  with 
their  grave  sweet  faces,  their  large  resonant  lutes, 
their  sober  grey-green  draperies,  rhythmically 
hymning  the  new-born  Child,  while  the  girlish 
mother,  who  has  tenderly  spread  the  skirt  of  her 
robe  on  the  rough  ground  for  the  infant  to  lie  on, 
kneels  in  silent  adoration. 

In  Perugino  is  concentrated  all  the  sweetness, 
sometimes  a  rather  cloying  sweetness,  of  Umbrian 
art.  His  Virgin  and  Child  with  Michael  and  Raphael 
(288)  is  redeemed  from  a  too  soft  and  dainty 
beauty  by  an  extraordinarily  fine  feeling  of  space 
which  gives  the  composition  placidity  and  dignity. 
Everything  is  hushed  and  soothing — the  air  still 
and  soundless,  the  figures  reposeful,  the  warrior 
archangel,  not  Milton's  Michael  "  with  hostile 
brow  and  visage  all  inflamed,"  is  clothed  with 
serenity  rather  than  strength. 

All  that  Perugino  attempted  of  lucidity  and 
grace  Raphael  achieved.  First  of  all  his  works  in 
the  Gallery  comes  the  Ansidei  Madonna  (1171), 
"quite  the  loveliest  Raphael  in  the  world"  was 

40 


Bacchus   \\ t>  Ariadne 

Tit  in  i  i 


Photograph  :  Hanfstaengl 

Consecration  of  St.  Nicholas 

Veronese 


THE   CENTRAL   ITALIAN   SCHOOLS 

Ruskin's  verdict  after  one  of  his  last  visits  to  the 
Gallery.  It  shares  the  distinction  with  Holbein's 
Christina  of  Denmark  of  being  the  most  costly 
picture  in  the  collection,  the  price — the  curious 
in  such  matters  may  be  interested  to  learn — 
working  out  at  more  than  £14  the  square  inch. 
The  Madonna  and  Child  are  less  interesting 
than  the  figures  of  the  attendant  saints— on  the 
left  St  John  the  Baptist,  clad  in  rough  camel- 
skin,  bearing  a  crystal  cross,  rapt  in  adoration, 
on  the  right  St  Nicholas  of  Bari,  vested  in 
jewelled  cope,  absorbed  in  the  reading  of  a  book 
—  the  two  enduring  and  conflicting  types  of  the 
Christian  saint,  the  one  devotional,  ecstatic,  con- 
templative, the  other  active,  practical,  scholarly. 
In  the  distance  are  seen  glimpses  of  a  faultless 
little  Apennine  landscape.  From  the  luminous 
pale  blue  sky  proceeds  a  crystalline  light  which 
irradiates  all  the  cool  pearly  atmosphere  in  the 
arched  portico  and  gives  a  telling  value  to  the 
sparely  used  touches  of  colour  in  the  bishop's 
jewels,  the  illumiuated  missal  on  the  knee  of  the 
Virgin,  the  coral  chaplets  hanging  down  on  either 
side  of  the  throne.  The  seraphic  grace  of  the 
Umbrian  school  receives  here  its  complete  ex- 
pression ;  further  than  this  it  could  not  go.   And 

4i 


THE   NATIONAL    GALLERY 

therefore,  in  the  late  Arthur  Strong's  view,  "  the 
Ansidei  Madonna  is  Raphael's  farewell  effort,  as 
it  were,  in  a  type  which  he  was  on  the  point  of 
discarding  as  too  narrow  and  too  stiff  for  the 
growing  impulse  of  his  genius." 

A  more  mature  woi-k  of  the  master's  is  the 
portrait  of  Pope  Julius  II.  (27).  The  colour  scheme 
is  rich  but  simple,  a  harmony  of  red,  green  and 
white.  The  finely  modelled  head  is  profoundly 
expressive,  suggestive  of  a  warrior,  as  the  Pope 
indeed  was,  who  looks  back  with  a  stern  joy  upon 
the  record  of  his  warfare.  "  Raphael  has  caught 
the  momentary  repose  of  a  restless  and  passionate 
sjDirit,"  wrote  Dr  Mandell  Creighton,  "and  has 
shown  all  the  grace  and  beauty  which  are  to  be 
found  in  the  sense  of  power  repressed  and  power 
at  rest.  Seated  in  an  arm-chair,  with  head  bent 
downward,  the  Pope  is  in  deep  thought.  His 
furrowed  brow  and  his  deep-sunk  eyes  tell  of 
energy  and  decision.  The  long-drawn  corners  of 
his  mouth  betoken  constant  dealings  with  the 
world." 


42 


Ill 


THE  NORTH  ITALIAN  SCHOOLS 

The  splendour  of  the  National  Collection  is  no- 
where more  apparent  than  in  the  pictures  of  the 
Venetian  school.  They  are  as  remarkable  for  their 
high  level  of  excellence  as  for  their  representative 
character.  Of  course  there  are  the  well-nigh 
inevitable  omissions.  Most  of  all  we  regret  the 
absence  of  anything  from  Giorgione's  golden 
brush  save  one  small  silver-grey  knight  in  armour 
(269),  a  study  for  the  great  altarpiece  at  Castel- 
franco,  but  as  only  about  a  score  of  his  undisputed 
works  are  in  existence  we  can  scarcely  repine. 
There  is  nothing  to  represent  the  pleasure-loving 
Carpaccio,  whose  pageant-pictures  are  one  of  the 
chief  glories  of  the  Accademia  at  Venice ;  the 
three  examples  of  Tintoretto  are  only  enough 
to  make  us  wish  for  more ;  and  from  the  small 
designs  of  Tiepolo  we  can  but  guess  at  the  force 
and  splendour,  melodramatic  though  it  be,  of  the 
last  of  the  Venetians.   But  for  these  deficiencies 

43 


THE   NATIONAL   GALLERY 

there  are  memorable  compensations.  The  little 
collection  of  Crivelli's  curiously  felicitous  work 
is  unrivalled  for  quality  and  completeness ;  the 
delightful  series  of  Giovanni  Bellini,  every  one 
a  masterpiece,  is  another  purple  patch  ;  the 
examples  of  Titian  and  Veronese,  if  not  numer- 
ous, are  adequate ;  and  Canaletto,  the  painter  of 
Venice  itself,  is  seen  here  in  his  happiest  mood. 

The  archaistic  methods  of  Crivelli,  who  though 
he  survived  till  the  close  of  the  fifteenth  century 
persisted  in  adhering  to  the  fashion  of  its  begin- 
ning, are  very  evident  in  the  several  panels  which 
are  built  up  into  a  large  and  imposing  altarpiece 
(788).  The  massive  jewels  and  ornaments  stand 
out  in  high  relief  like  bosses,  and  the  cord  upon 
which  the  solid  keys  of  St  Peter  depend  is  an 
actual  piece  of  string  hanging  quite  free  from  the 
surface.  There  was  a  certain  affectation  in  this 
adherence  to  out-of-date  methods,  for  Crivelli  was 
quite  alive  to  all  the  innovations  of  his  con- 
temporaries and  could,  if  he  wished  it,  be  as 
naturalistic  as  any  of  them — particularly  in  his 
representation  of  fruit  and  vegetables,  for  which 
he  had  a  veritable  passion.  He  loved  to  pile  all 
the  produce  of  the  market  garden  about  the 
thrones  of  his  Madonnas,  giving   special  promi- 

44 


THE   NORTH   ITALIAN   SCHOOLS 

nence  to  his  favourite  vegetable,  the  cucumber. 
The  Annunciation  (739),  an  exquisite  and  curious 
composition,  showing  simultaneously  the  interior 
of  the  Virgin's  room  and  the  street  without, 
exhibits  the  painter's  almost  Dutch  delight  in 
depicting  intimate  domestic  appointments.  It 
would  seem  that  the  picture  had  been  painted 
not  all  to  illustrate  the  Annunciation,  but 
expressly  for  the  sake  of  the  profusion  of 
decorative  detail — the  rich  harmonies  of  the 
Eastern  rugs,  the  elaboi-ate  arabesques  of  the 
cornice  and  pilasters,  the  iridescent  peacock,  the 
trim  little  bed  with  its  green  bedspread  and  three 
embroidered  pillows,  the  careful  graining  of  the 
woodwork  behind,  and  the  candlesticks,  dishes 
and  pickle-jars  all  in  a  row  on  the  shelf  above. 
"  What  are  we  to  think  of  this  painter?  "  asks  Sir 
Charles  Holroyd.  "Was  he  always  quite  serious, 
or  had  he  sometimes  a  smile  on  his  face  as  he 
worked?  he  is  so  skilful  in  some  things,  and 
yet  so  childlike  in  others,  we  cannot  quite  tell 
how  to  take  him." 

Passing  to  Giovanni  Bellini,  we  find  it  difficult 
to  realise  that  this  painter  was  born  in  the  same 
year  as  Crivelli,  so  much  more  modern  is  his 
method  and  spirit.   His  early  work,  Christ's  Agony 

45 


THE   NATIONAL    GALLERY 

in  the  Garden  (726)  betrays  the  same  profound 
religious  emotion  as  his  Pieta  at  Milan,  beneath 
which  he  inscribed  a  line  telling  how  he  worked 
in  tears  and  anguish  for  the  sorrows  of  his  suffer- 
ing Lord.  It  is  interesting  to  note  the  intro- 
duction of  the  modern  feeling  for  landscape  into 
this  picture.  The  earlier  Italian  landscape  had 
been  a  dull  convention,  untouched  by  any  reflec- 
tion of  human  emotion.  Bellini  however  aims  at 
impressing  upon  it  his  own  personal  mood, 
planning  the  effect  of  the  lurid  twilight  sky,  the 
long  sombre  hill,  the  bleak  plain,  to  enhance  the 
sense  of  foreboding  tragedy.  Landscape  is  the 
predominant  interest  in  The  Death  of  St  Peter 
Martyr  (812),  but  here  in  accordance  with  the  new 
spirit  that  was  coming  over  Venetian  art,  the 
austerity  of  his  earlier  work  is  melted  in  a 
sensuous  softness  and  glow.  The  Dominican 
general  may  be  murdered  in  the  foreground, 
but  this  incident  must  on  no  account  be  allowed 
to  disturb  the  exquisite  serenity  of  the  peaceful 
woodland  scene,  glowing  in  the  mellow  light  of 
the  afternoon  sun — for  the  Venetians  are  now 
demanding  on  their  walls  neither  devotion  nor 
theology,  but  just  beautiful  colour.  "You  see  in  a 
moment  the  main   characteristic   of  the  school," 

46 


THE   NORTH    ITALIAN   SCHOOLS 

says  Ruskin,  commenting  on  this  picture,  "that 
it  mattered  not  in  the  least  to  John,  and  that  he 
doesn't  expect  it  to  matter  to  you,  whether  people 
are  martyred  or  not,  so  long  as  one  can  make  a 
pretty  grey  of  their  gown,  and  a  nice  white  of 
their  sleeves,  and  infinite  decoration  of  forest 
leaves  behind,  and  a  divine  picture  at  last  out  of 
all."  The  Doge  Leonardo  Lorcdano  (189),  painted 
when  the  artist  was  nearly  eighty,  is  one  of  the 
great  portraits  of  the  world.  Beautiful  as  a  piece 
of  decoration,  with  the  brilliant  effect  of  the 
g;nd  and  white  brocaded  mantle  against  a  glow- 
ing azure  background,  the  picture  conquers  by 
its  intense  concentration  of  personality.  Did  ever 
the  spirit  of  a  man  receive  more  vivid  concrete 
expression  than  in  the  face  of  this  astute  ruler  ? 
— "fearless,  faithful,  patient,  impenetrable,  im- 
placable— every  word  a  fate."  The  Virgin  and 
Child  (280)  is  an  excellent  example  of  the  Venetian 
type  of  the  Madonna,  neither  intellectual  and 
contemplative,  as  in  Florence,  nor  sweet  and 
girlish,  as  in  Umbria,  but  serene,  confident, 
dignified,  the  eternal  mother,  with  a  neck  set 
firm  as  a  column — "  Turris  eburnea  "  rather  than 
"  Rosa  Mystica." 

If  the  Gallery  had  included  one  of  Giorgione's 

47 


THE   NATIONAL   GALLERY 

representative  works  we  should  have  seen  a 
perfect  embodiment  of  the  ripened  spirit  of  the 
Renaissance.  After  he  had  charmed  the  Venetians 
with  his  peculiar  mellow  beauty,  other  artists 
were  obliged  to  adopt  his  method,  treating  the 
subject  without  much  care  for  the  elucidation  of 
its  actual  meaning,  but  for  the  sake  of  evoking 
a  pleasurable  mood  and  producing  a  richly 
coloured  surface.  One  of  the  most  successful  of 
these  popularisers  was  Vincenzo  Catena.  "  Upon 
hearing  the  title  of  one  of  Catena's  works  in  the 
National  Gallery,"  writes  Mr  Berenson,  "A  Warrior 
adoring  the  Infant  Christ  (234),  who  could  imagine 
what  a  treat  the  picture  had  in  store  for  him  ?  It 
is  a  fragrant  summer  landscape  enjoyed  by  a  few 
quiet  people,  one  of  whom,  in  armour,  with  the 
glamour  of  the  Orient  about  him,  kneels  at  the 
Virgin's  feet,  while  a  romantic  young  page  holds 
his  horse's  bridle.  I  mention  this  picture  in 
particular  because  it  is  so  good  an  instance  of  the 
Giorgionesque  way  of  treating  a  subject ;  not  for 
the  story,  nor  for  the  display  of  skill,  nor  for  the 
obvious  feeling,  but  for  the  lovely  landscape,  for 
the  effects  of  light  and  colour,  and  for  the  sweet- 
ness of  human  relations."  Catena's  other  picture, 
St  Jerome  in  his  Study  (69i),  though  at  first  sight 

48 


Maim  >n  \  a  ok  the  Baske  i 

'  'orreggio 


Portrait  of  a  Tailor 

Moroni 


THE   NORTH   ITALIAN    SCHOOLS 

of  less  obvious  charm,  shows  the  same  sort  of 
intention,  the  evocation  by  means  of  soft  colour 
and  simplified  design  of  a  mood  of  peacefulness 
and  contentment.  Again  the  subject,  the  theo- 
logical labours  of  the  saint,  matters  little ;  it  is 
the  atmosphere  that  counts,  the  brightness  of  the 
mountain  air,  the  serenity  of  the  landscape  seen 
through  the  open  window,  the  spaciousness  of 
the  bare  clean  room — and  what  a  room  for  clear 
thinking  ! 

Titian  began  working  upon  the  same  vein  that 
Giorgione  had  opened  out,  but  in  time,  while 
retaining  the  joyousness  of  the  early  Renaissance 
spirit,  he  developed  a  consciousness  of  the  am- 
plitude and  dignity  of  life,  which  the  young 
Giorgione,  dying  prematurely  at  the  age  of  thirty- 
two,  never  attained.  The  Gallery  possesses  six  of 
the  finest  works  of  Titian — all  too  few  to  enable 
us  to  gauge  the  capacity  of  that  untiring  hand 
and  brain  which  laboured  through  nearly  a  whole 
century — but  though  "  others  may  be  here  in 
force,  Titian  is  on  his  throne."  And  that  throne 
is  the  Bacchus  and  Ariadne  (35),  according  to  Sir 
Edward  Poynter  "  in  its  combination  of  all  the 
qualities  which  go  to  make  a  great  work  of  art, 
possibly  the  finest  picture  in  the  world."  The 
D  49 


THE   NATIONAL   GALLERY 

scene  represents  Ariadne  by  the  seashore, 
deserted  by  her  lover  Theseus,  when  suddenly 
Bacchus  with  his  rout  of  revellers  dashes  up  and, 
enamoured  of  her  beauty,  leaps  from  his  leopard- 
drawn  car  to  make  her  his  bride.  It  is  impossible 
in  words  to  give  any  broken  echo  of  this  paean  of 
the  joy  and  exuberance  of  living.  Some  hint  of 
the  careful  thought  which  for  three  years  the 
painter  gave  to  this  work  is  conveyed  by  Sir 
Joshua  Reynolds'  sober  analysis  of  a  single 
passage,  the  red  scarf  of  Ariadne.  "  The  figure  of 
Ariadne  is  separated  from  the  great  group,  and  is 
dressed  in  blue,  which,  added  to  the  colour  of  the 
sea,  makes  that  quantity  of  cold  colour  which 
Titian  thought  necessary  for  the  support  and 
brilliancy  of  the  great  group ;  which  group  is 
composed,  with  very  little  exception,  entirely  of 
mellow  colours.  But  as  in  this  case  the  picture 
would  be  divided  into  two  distinct  parts,  one  half 
cold  and  the  other  warm,  it  was  necessary  to 
carry  some  of  the  mellow  colours  of  the  great 
group  into  the  cold  part  of  the  picture,  and  a  part 
of  the  cold  into  the  great  group ;  accordingly, 
Titian  gave  Ariadne  a  red  scarf,  and  to  one  of 
the  Bacchantes  a  little  blue  drapery."  All  of  which 
goes  to  prove  that  the  problem  of  knowing  when 

50 


THE   NORTH   ITALIAN    SCHOOLS 

to  put  a  patch  of  red  into  a  picture  and  when  a 
blue  one  is  less  easy  of  solution  than  it  would 
appear ! 

The  only  example  in  the  Gallery  of  Titian's 
portraiture  is  the  recently  acquired  Portrait  of 
Ariosto  (1944) — the  title  is  probably  a  misnomer 
— painted  in  his  earlier  manner.  The  face  shows 
something  of  that  disillusion  and  scepticism 
which  the  Renaissance,  with  all  its  noble  rapture, 
brought  to  the  heart  of  man.  The  suggestion  of 
pride  and  disdain  is  marvellously  accentuated  by 
the  grand  gesture  of  the  arm.  The  whole  cos- 
tume is  reduced  to  one  magnificent  quilted  sleeve, 
which  shows  as  clearly  as  any  piece  of  painting  by 
Velasquez  what  effect  of  splendour  and  voluptu- 
ousness may  be  achieved  without  going  beyond 
the  range  of  the  silvery  tones  of  grey  and  black. 

Paul  Veronese  is  magnificently  represented  by 
The  Family  of  Darius  (2.94),  the  greatest  historical 
painting  of  the  collection.  Like  Shakespeare, 
Veronese  recks  little  of  historical  propriety  and 
boldly  reconstructs  this  scene  of  Greek  history 
according  to  the  pattern  of  the  life  of  Venice 
in  his  own  day,  "getting  always  vital  truth  out 
of  the  vital  present."  The  handling  of  so  great  a 
mass  of  material — the  kneeling  princesses  in  the 

5i 


THE   NATIONAL   GALLERY 

Venetian  costumes  of  the  period,  the  group  of 
generals,  the  attendant  soldiers  and  servants,  dog, 
monkey  and  all,  the  whole  framed  in  an  elaborate 
architectural  setting — presented  almost  insuper- 
able difficulties  of  composition ;  and  yet  here 
there  is  no  painful  sense  of  effort,  no  trace  of 
second  thoughts,  it  is  all  executed  with  a  superb 
ease,  directness  and  certainty,  recalling  as  Ruskin 
has  said  "the  movements  of  the  finest  fencer." 
The  principal  figures  were  portraits  of  the  Pisani 
family,  at  whose  villa  the  painter  had  been 
staying.  He  left  the  picture  behind  him  saying 
that  it  would  defray  the  expenses  of  his  enter- 
tainment. The  family  let  three  centuries  elapse 
before  they  realised  their  profit  on  the  transaction, 
selling  the  picture  at  last  in  1857  to  the  National 
Gallery  for  upwards  of  £13,000.  The  four  allegor- 
ical pictures  known  as  Unfaithfulness,  Scorn, 
Respect  and  Happy  Union  (1318,  1324-1326)  were 
originally  designed  for  the  decoration  of  a  ceiling, 
a  fact  which  the  eye  must  allow  for  when  viewing 
them  in  their  upright  position.  Equally  decorative 
is  the  figure  in  the  Vision  of  Saint  Helena  (1041), 
beautiful  in  its  pearl  and  silver  harmonies  and 
reposeful  as  a  piece  of  antique  Greek  sculpture. 
Of  Tintoretto,  the  last  of  the  great  Venetian 

52 


THE   NORTH    ITALIAN   SCHOOLS 

triumvirate,  we  have  but  an  insufficient  glimpse 
in  the  three  of  his  works  which  the  Gallery 
possesses.  The  Origin  of  the  Milky  Way  (1314),  a 
charming  illustration  of  a  classic  myth,  scarcely 
affords  us  an  example  of  that  poetry  of  chiaroscuro 
which  Tintoretto  brought  to  perfection,  while  it 
displays  his  determination  at  all  costs  to  astonish 
and  to  be  original. 

The  "  Correggiosity  of  Correggio,"  a  painter 
working  outside  the  Venetian  sphere  of  influence, 
is  seen  in  its  most  fascinating  phase  in  The 
Education  of  Cupid  (10),  one  of  the  two  pictures 
which  Ruskin  said  he  would  last  part  with  out  of 
the  Gallery,  the  other  being  Titian's  Bacchus  and 
Ariadne.  It  is  an  entirely  flawless  piece  of  flesh 
painting,  beside  which  "  the  best  of  Titian  and 
the  best  of  Rubens  would  look  oily  and  yellow." 
The  only  other  work  in  the  Gallery  which  can 
challenge  comparison  with  it  in  this  respect  is 
the  Venus  of  Velasquez,  and  even  that  work 
seems  more  like  the  prose  of  a  scientific  statement 
after  Correggio's  lyric  poetry  of  light  and  form. 
The  J'irgin  of  the  Basket  (23)  is  a  marvellous 
little  tour  de  jorce,  which  reminds  us  of  the 
remark  of  Reynolds,  "If  I  had  not  seen  it 
done  by   Correggio,   I   should  have  taken  it  to 

S3 


THE   NATIONAL   GALLERY 

be  impossible."  The  subject  which  enthralled 
painters  all  through  the  Middle  Ages  has  now 
finally  escaped  from  the  dominion  of  the  Church. 
Here  we  have  just  a  beautiful,  smiling  mother 
playing  sweet  games  of  love  with  her  wayward 
boy — no  more  and  no  less, 

Two  portrait  painters  of  exceptional  talent, 
who  have  only  just  missed  a  place  in  the  very 
first  rank,  Moretto  and  Moroni,  are  here  seen  at 
their  best.  With  subtle  technical  skill  and 
sympathetic  insight  they  portray  the  dignity 
and  refinement  of  the  Italian  noble  of  the  later 
Renaissance — at  a  period,  be  it  noted,  when  the 
Spaniards  who  now  dominated  the  peninsula 
had  set  the  fashion  for  black  in  dress,  in  place 
of  the  gay  colours  of  a  happier  age.  Moroni  is 
perhaps  more  at  his  ease  when  painting  less 
distinguished  sitters.  His  portraits  of  a  tailor 
(697),  attentive  and  business-like,  and  of  a  lawyer, 
alert  and  combative  (742),  have  that  special 
quality  which  makes  what  we  call  a  "speaking 
likeness." 

Happily  Venetian  painting  was  an  unconscion- 
ably long  time  in  dying,  and  the  eighteenth 
century  produced  some  painters  who,  if  they 
lacked  the  vast  imagination  of  their  predecessors, 

54 


THE   NORTH    ITALIAN   SCHOOLS 

were  nevertheless  very  competent  workmen  in 
oils.  Canaletto  and  Guardi  painted  as  a  fitting 
epilogue  to  the  school  a  portrait  of  the  city 
itself.  What  a  sober  and  literal  portrait  it  is 
may  be  seen  from  A  View  on  the  Grand  Canal 
(l63).  The  features  of  the  buildings  are  re- 
corded as  accurately  as  in  an  architect's  elevation 
— every  brick  is  accounted  for,  yet,  as  Ruskin 
said,  "  What  more  there  is  in  Venice  than  brick 
and  stone — what  there  is  of  mystery  and  death, 
and  memory  and  beauty — what  there  is  to  be 
learnt  and  lamented,  to  be  loved  or  wept — we 
look  for  to  Canaletto  in  vain."  Canaletto  more- 
over has  been  somewhat  sharply  taken  to  task 
for  not  setting  his  canvases  aglow  with  all  those 
ensanguined  atmospheric  enchantments  which 
the  northerner,  taught  by  Turner,  expects  to 
await  him  on  every  canal.  But  Venice  does  not 
always  show  like  a  vision  in  the  Apocalypse,  and 
the  fact  that  Canaletto  has  chosen  to  render  that 
delicate  greyness,  born  of  the  sea  mists,  which  so 
often  veils  the  city  on  the  lagoons,  docs  not  argue 
any  insensibility  to  the  beauty  of  atmosphere,  but 
rather  the  reverse.  In  his  View  of  Venice  (127) 
showing  the  Scuola  della  Carita  (now  the 
Academy  of  Arts),  the  buildings,  as  structurally 

55 


THE   NATIONAL    GALLERY 

solid  as  any  buildings  ever  painted,  are  visibly 
swathed  in  atmosphere.  This  picture  is  more 
than  a  photographic  presentment — it  gives  us 
the  sense  of  overhearing  the  life  of  the  city,  the 
quiet,  unemotional,  workaday  life  that  is  lived 
year  in  and  year  out  behind  the  scenes  of  that 
amazing  piece  of  stage  decor  which  is  Venice. 

Guardi  was  always  ready  to  compromise  truth 
for  the  sake  of  telling  effects.  His  Church  of 
S.  Maria  del/a  Salute  (2098)  looks  unsubstantial 
after  Canaletto's  enduring  stonework,  and  his 
desire  to  record  a  more  instantaneous  impression 
than  that  of  his  master  led  him  to  fret  his  picture 
with  teasing  little  flecks  of  white.  He  had  the 
modern  eye,  if  not  quite  the  modern  manner, 
and  was  perhaps  the  first  to  occupy  himself  with 
that  cult  of  the  picturesque  which  has  spread 
like  a  blight  over  so  much  of  modern  art.  He 
hunted  diligently  for  "bits  of  old  Venice,"  one 
of  which  he  has  snapshotted  so  successfully 
in  his  View  through  an  Archway  (1054). 


56 


A\  Old  Lady 

Rembrandt 


^*J 


M 


Portrait  of  Himself 

Rembrandt 


IV 

THE    DUTCH    SCHOOL 

"A  serious  student  of  art,"  says  Mr  Berenson, 
"  will  scarcely  think  of  putting  many  of  even  the 
highest  achievements  of  the  Italians,  considered 
purely  as  technique,  beside  the  works  of  the 
great  Dutchmen."  For  the  Dutch  masters  of 
the  seventeenth  century,  with  their  sure  grasp 
of  realities,  their  feeling  for  the  humorous  and 
the  pathetic  in  the  scenes  of  familiar  life,  and 
above  all  their  tradition  of  sound  craftsmanship, 
the  English  amateur  of  painting  of  the  old  school 
invariably  entertained  a  profound  respect.  He 
collected  their  works  with  assiduity,  and  to-day 
the  finest  examples  of  Dutch  art  in  England  are 
probably  still  to  be  found,  not  in  public  galleries, 
but  in  collections  formed  by  connoisseurs  in  the 
eighteenth  and  nineteenth  centuries.  From  one 
such  collection  the  Dutch  pictures  at  the  National 
Gallery  are  principally  drawn.  Sir  Bobert  Peel 
is  chiefly  known  to  fame  as  the  repealer  of  the 

57 


THE   NATIONAL   GALLERY 

Corn  Laws,  but  he  has  a  second  title  to  the 
remembrance  of  posterity  as  a  picture  collector. 
The  Peel  Collection  was  offered  to  the  Govern- 
ment in  1871,  and  purchased  for  the  very 
moderate  sum  of  £70,000 — just  the  same  amount 
as  was  paid  a  few  years  later  for  the  Raphael 
Madonna  from  the  Blenheim  Collection. 

Although  Sir  William  Gregory,  one  of  the 
trustees  of  the  Gallery,  in  proposing  the  vote  for 
the  special  grant  in  the  House  of  Commons,  said 
that  "  it  was  gratifying  to  see  that  the  taste  of 
the  amateur  was  on  a  par  with  the  sagacity  of 
the  minister,"  it  can  scarcely  be  claimed  for  Sir 
Robert  that  his  connoisseurship  was  of  the 
highest  order.  But  if  he  lacked  an  expert's 
knowledge  himself,  he  possessed  the  next  best 
thing  to  it — the  faculty  of  availing  himself  of  the 
knowledge  of  others.  He  was  accustomed  to 
employ  expert  agents  and  to  allow  them  a  liberal 
discretion.  Moreover  in  forming  his  collection 
he  laid  down  the  soundest  principle  that  a 
collector  could  adopt.  In  reference  to  a  com- 
mission for  the  purchase  of  a  certain  picture  one 
of  his  agents  wrote,  "  He  said  that  he  was  willing 
to  give  a  good  price,  if  a  fine  picture ;  and  if  it 
were  not,  he  would  not  have  it  at  any  price." 

58 


THE   DUTCH    SCHOOL 

Thanks  to  his  determination  to  buy  only  the 
best  and  to  his  scrupulousness  in  weeding  out 
inferior  examples,  his  collection  reached  an 
exceptionally  high  level  of  excellence — according 
to  Sir  William  Armstrong  it  was  "  the  finest 
cabinet  of  Dutch  pictures  ever  collected  by  an 
amateur." 

Of  the  seventy-eight  paintings  which  were 
thus  acquired  by  the  nation,  fifty-five  belonged  to 
the  Dutch  school.  This  was  a  fortunate  circum- 
stance, for  it  did  something  to  redress  the 
balance  between  the  art  of  the  North  and  the 
South  as  represented  in  the  Gallery.  Sir 
Charles  Eastlake's  policy  of  concentrating  on 
the  fifteenth  and  sixteenth  century  Italians  had 
involved  a  certain  neglect  of  the  great  Dutch- 
men. The  authorities  moreover  had  felt  no 
special  need  for  efforts  in  this  direction,  as  it  was 
generally  believed  that  a  number  of  the  mastei*- 
pieces  of  Dutch  art  in  the  hands  of  private 
owners  would  ultimately  find  their  way  into  the 
National  Collection  by  donation  and  bequest — an 
optimistic  anticipation  which  has  not  yet  been 
realised. 

The  Peel  Collection  included  but  a  single 
Rembrandt,  but  as  it  happened   Rembrandt  was 

59 


THE   NATIONAL   GALLERY 

the  one  Dutch  painter  who  was  already  fairly 
well  represented  in  the  Gallery.  Perhaps  none 
of  the  seventeen  of  his  works  seen  here  shows 
the  master  in  what  has  been  called  his  Shake- 
spearean mood ;  but  the  two  small  pictures  which 
formed  part  of  the  original  Angerstein  Collection, 
The  Woman  taken  in  Adultery  (45)  and  The 
Adoration  of  the  Shepherds  (47),  combine  a  marvel- 
lous technical  dexterity  with  great  imaginative 
power.  The  Bible  presents  to  the  painter 
a  literature  singularly  rich  in  those  passages 
which  concentrate  emotion  in  a  single  memorable 
image  or  incident,  and  better  than  any  other 
painter  Rembrandt  knew  how  to  express  the 
significance  of  these  fateful  moments  in  the 
terms  of  a  pictorial  statement.  The  Woman  taken 
in  Adultery  admirably  illustrates  his  practice  of 
arranging  the  contrast  of  light  and  shade  so  as 
to  give  the  fullest  force  to  the  dramatic  intensity 
of  the  scene.  The  background  of  the  Temple 
is  full  of  that  magic  mystery  of  gloom  in  which 
Rembrandt's  imagination  delighted — a  dim  crowd 
of  worshippers,  vast  columns  and  a  glittering 
high  altar  towering  up  with  a  vague  suggestion 
of  Oriental  magnificence.  Amidst  the  surround- 
ing  darkness  the  principal  actors  in   the  drama 

60 


THE   DUTCH   SCHOOL 

stand  out  in  the  keen  emphasis  of  a  shaft  of  light. 
The  eye  is  first  attracted  to  the  kneeling  woman 
dressed  in  white,  who  is  the  most  strongly  lighted 
of  the  group,  next  to  the  figure  of  Christ,  and 
then  passes  on  to  Peter,  the  Pharisees  and  the 
soldiers.  Although  the  scale  of  the  figures  is 
reduced  almost  to  that  of  a  miniature,  the 
characterisation  of  each  is  pi'ecise  and  eloquent 
— Christ  serene  and  understanding,  Peter  in- 
tently anxious  to  be  just,  the  accusing  Pharisee 
cunningly  seeking  to  inveigle  the  Master,  the 
soldier  grasping  the  woman's  skirt,  stolid  and 
impassive,  the  leering  old  villain  immediately  on 
his  left,  heartlessly  relishing  the  piquancy  of  the 
scandal,  and  the  two  Pharisees  in  the  foreground, 
the  one  with  illumined  face  gravely  appraising 
the  verdict,  the  other  with  face  averted  expressing 
in  his  very  pose  the  consciousness  of  his  own 
self-righteousness.  The  companion  picture,  The 
Adoration  of  the  Shepherds  (47),  is,  in  the  words 
of  Mr  Arthur  Strong,  "  A  rendering  of  the  scene 
such  as  no  other  man  could  have  given.  The 
dim  light,  the  squalor  of  the  closely  huddled 
peasants,  who  speak  in  whispers  for  fear  of 
awaking  the  child,  the  pervading  atmosphere 
of    hopeless    poverty — all    this    shows    how    pro- 

61 


THE   NATIONAL    GALLERY 

foundly  Rembrandt  must  have  pondered  the  real 
nature  and  beginnings  of  that  Gospel  which  the 
common  people  heard  gladly.  The  great  writer 
of  our  day,  who  claimed  that  he  alone  in  his 
century  had  understood  Jesus  and  St  Francis, 
said :  J'ai  un  vif  gout  pour  les  pauvres.  Rem- 
brandt might  have  said  the  same." 

The  dramatic  note  sounded  in  both  these 
pictures  is  equally  present  in  the  portraits. 
Here  the  drama  is  inward  and  spiritual — the 
story  of  the  adventures  of  the  soul.  In  the  two 
portraits  of  himself  he  has  painted  his  own 
autobiography.  In  the  first  (672)  we  see  him, 
with  an  expression  of  self-reliance  and  keen 
observant  glance,  at  that  critical  moment  of 
a  man's  career  when,  having  surrendered  the 
irresponsible  ambitions  of  youth,  he  first  begins 
to  see  life  steadily  and  whole,  and  to  measure 
its  problems  and  the  limitations  of  its  possibilities. 
In  the  second  (221)  he  has  painted  the  history 
of  the  following  thirty  years  of  his  life.  Though 
battered  by  time,  the  face  is  essentially  the 
same — that  of  a  man  who  is  at  the  same  time  a 
penetrating  reader  of  life  and  an  eager  actor  in 
it.  The  problems  are  still  unresolved,  but  age 
has  brought,  together  with   disappointment  and 

62 


THE   DUTCH   SCHOOL 

disillusion,  a  certain  temper  of  acceptance,  and 
we  feel  that  the  man  who  has  drunk  so  deeply 
of  life  is  able  at  the  end  of  the  feast  to  pronounce 
its  flavour  to  be,  on  the  whole,  good.  "  In 
manner,"  says  Sir  William  Armstrong,  "it  is 
amazingly  free,  irresponsible,  and  what  in  any- 
one but  a  stupendous  master  we  should  call 
careless.  It  looks  as  if  he  had  taken  up  the 
first  dirty  palette  on  which  he  could  lay  his 
hands,  and  set  himself  to  the  making  of  a  pic- 
ture with  no  further  thought.  To  those  who  put 
signs  of  mastery  above  all  other  qualities,  it  is 
one  of  the  most  attractive  pictures  in  the  whole 
Gallery." 

In  the  remaining  portraits  may  be  traced 
Rembrandt's  growing  absorption  in  the  rendering 
of  character.  The  detail  of  his  early  work — the 
delight  in  the  hardness  of  metal,  in  the  fragility 
of  linen  and  lace — passes  out  of  the  picture  ;  the 
background  is  emptied  of  incident,  and  even 
colour  itself  is  all  but  suppressed,  as  though 
too  insignificant  an  accident  in  the  momentous 
theme  he  is  alone  concerned  with — the  conflict 
of  the  soul  with  fate.  Human  life  is  seen  against 
the  background  of  the  shadows  of  destiny. 
While  his  grasp  of  reality  grows  firmer,  his  sense 

63 


THE   NATIONAL   GALLERY 

of  the  mystery  which  envelops  it  becomes  more 
acute.  For  the  true  realist  must  of  necessity  be 
a  mystic,  and  in  this  sense  Rembrandt  was  the 
greatest  of  realists. 

Though  essentially  a  man  of  his  own  people 
and  his  own  time — as  every  man  who  is  for  all 
peoples  and  for  all  time  always  has  been — 
Rembrandt  is  separated  by  an  impassable  gulf 
from  all  other  painters  of  the  Dutch  school. 
Realists  they  were  to  a  man,  but  realists  for 
whom  the  most  real  thing  about  an  object  was 
its  visible  surface.  They  lacked  the  penetrating 
insight  of  Rembrandt,  which  pierced  through  the 
outer  covering  to  the  romance  and  poetry  that 
is  inwoven  with  the  stuff  of  common  life.  The 
one  among  them  who  in  spiritual  sensitiveness 
stands  next  to  Rembrandt  is  his  own  pupil, 
Pieter  de  Hooch,  of  whose  work  the  Gallery 
contains  four  admirable  examples  (794,  834,  835, 
2552).  In  these  scenes,  composed  of  the  most 
commonplace  material — the  backyard  of  a  house 
with  a  housewife  watching  her  servant  cleaning 
fish,  another  backyard  with  a  woman  and  child 
coming  out  of  an  outhouse,  a  woman  offering  a 
visitor  a  glass  of  wine — he  has  expressed  a 
serenity  and    contentment  of  a    quite    different 

64 


A  Dutch  I\  i  erior 

/»;•  Hooch 


! 


A  Man's  Pom  rait 

Fran s  Hals 


THE   DUTCH    SCHOOL 

order   from   that  grosser   satisfaction   which   the 
Dutch  painter  too  often  found  exclusively  in  the 
insignia   of  prosperity — thick    velvets    and  furs, 
massive     metalwork,    well-stocked     larders    and 
prize   cattle.     He  is  possessed  of  an  uncommon 
power  of  divining  those  rare,  still  moments  when 
the    scales    fall    from    the    eyes    and    a    trivial 
incident — the  gesture  of  a  friend,  the  attitude  of 
a  woman  waiting  at  an  open  door,  the  spark  of 
light   in   a  glass   of  clear  wine — discovers   some 
hitherto   unsuspected   phase   of  beauty  and   sig- 
nificance. One  such  moment  he  has  eternalised 
in    A    Dutch    Interior   (834).    The    picture    has    a 
special  interest,  as  it  displays  the  peculiarities  of 
the  painter's  technique,  which  has  been  carefully 
analysed  by  Sir  William  Armstrong.  "The  more 
luminous  parts  of  it,  such  as  the  costumes  of  the 
two  men  at  the  table,  are  painted  in  semi-opaque 
colour  over  a  brilliant  orange  ground.   Here  and 
there  the  orange  may  be  seen  peeping  out,  and 
its  presence  elsewhere  gives  a  peculiar  peai-liness 
to  the  tints  laid  upon  it.  De  Hooch  painted  very 
thinly.  In  this  picture  the  maid  with  the  brazier 
is  an  afterthought.  She  is  painted  over  the  tiles 
and  other  details  which  now  show  through  her 
skirts.  Before  she  was  put  in,  this  space  to  the 
E  65 


THE   NATIONAL   GALLERY 

right  was  occupied  by  an  old  gentleman  with  a 
white  beard  and  moustache,  and  a  wide-brimmed 
hat,   all    of  which    can    be    descried    under   the 
brown    of    the    mantelpiece.  ,  .  .  Probably    de 
Hooch  did  not  understand  how  a  single  coat  of 
oil  paint  loses  its   opacity  with   time,  especially 
when   free    from   white ;    and   so    some   of    his 
happiest    notes    have   lost    their   voice.    All    this 
process  is  made  use  of  to  get  as  near  as  possible 
to   actual  illusion  in  the  painting  of  sunlight." 
This   picture   resumes   many   of   the   distinctive 
qualities  of  the  Dutch  painters :  their  delight  in 
the  texture  of  things — note  the  rich  black  of  the 
woman's  jacket  which  seems  to  communicate  to 
the  tips  of  the  fingers  the  very  feel  of  velvet — 
the  depth  of  their  distances  —you  can  walk  over 
the  tiled  floor  right  into  the  room  and  in  and  out 
among    the    figures — their    preoccupation    with 
sunlight    caught   in   rooms,    playing   broadly    on 
bare    walls,    or    concentrated   as    sparks   on   the 
facets    of    glass    and    metal — their    choice    of 
moments  of  pause  and  the  intermission  of  labour 
in   preference  to  times  of  action   and  dramatic 
happenings.      All     these      features     are      again 
present  in   Metsu's    The   Music  Lesson    (839) — a 
subject  for  which  the    Dutch  painters  seem  to 

66 


THE   DUTCH    SCHOOL 

have  had  a  special  predilection  as  being  most  apt 
to  provide  them  with  that  note  of  quiet  harmony 
which  they  were  always  seeking.  Very  character- 
istic of  this  northern  school  is  the  painter's 
treatment  of  light.  He  does  not  dispense  it  with 
the  magnificent  prodigality  of  the  Italians ;  for 
him,  painting  beneath  the  watery  skies  of 
Holland,  it  is  a  precious  thing,  to  be  dealt  with 
frugally,  communicating  a  sense  of  pleasure  the 
more  exquisite  as  its  quantity  is  the  more  re- 
stricted. The  hide  and  seek  of  light  becomes  the 
central  interest  in  the  picture — losing  itself  in 
the  shadows,  finding  itself  again  in  the  hair  of 
the  man's  head,  on  his  collar  and  cuff,  in  the 
tilted  wine-glass,  on  the  scroll  of  music,  and 
mostly  subtly  caressing  the  pendent  earring  and 
the  skin  of  the  woman's  neck. 

It  has  been  observed  that  Dutch  painting 
succeeds  better  on  the  whole  with  the  upper 
classes  than  with  the  proletariat.  Jan  Steen,  the 
brewer,  however,  was  equally  at  home  in  low  life 
and  in  high,  and  here  we  have  examples  of  his 
work  in  both  spheres.  An  Interior  with  Figures 
(1378)  presents  one  of  those  ale-house  scenes 
which  seem  to  have  had  a  never-failing  attraction 
for  the  Dutch  picture-buying  public.  As  a  com- 

67 


THE   NATIONAL    GALLERY 

position  it  exhibits  Steen's  familiar  weakness — 
the  disproportion  between  the  minute  figures 
and  the  immensity  of  the  surrounding  space, 
resulting  in  a  consequent  absence  of  focus.  The 
microscopic  style  of  painting  is  carried  to  its 
furthest  limits  in  Gerard  Dou's  The  Poulterer's 
Shop  (825),  in  which  every  feather  of  the  bird's 
tail  and  every  hair  of  the  animal's  fur  is 
numbered. 

The  almost  complete  absence  in  the  Dutch 
rooms  of  pictures  of  historical  interest  is  a 
witness  to  the  somewhat  strange  indifference 
of  the  Dutch  painters  to  what  was  most  stirring 
in  a  singularly  stirring  epoch.  Judging  from  these 
pictures  we  should  suppose  that  they  painted  in 
an  atmosphere  of  profound  and  unbroken  peace ; 
in  point  of  fact  war  was  almost  continuous  with 
Spain,  with  England  and  with  France.  A  notable 
exception  to  this  lack  of  interest  in  the  dramatic 
incidents  in  the  nation's  life  is  to  be  found  in 
Terburg's  Peace  of  Milnster  (896),  perhaps  the 
most  vivid  presentment  of  a  historical  scene  in 
existence.  "  The  Lanzas  of  Velazquez  may  be  the 
greatest  historical  picture  in  the  world,"  says 
Sir  W.  Armstrong,  "but  this  Terborch  is  history. 
The  event  happened  thus,  in  this  room,  with  all 

68 


THE   DUTCH    SCHOOL 

these  people,  disposed  much  as  the  painter,  who 
was  there,  has  arranged  them  on  his  panel." 
Each  of  the  sixty  heads  is  a  highly  individualised 
portrait,  and  yet  the  picture  is  not  an  aggregate 
of  detached  portraits  but  a  single  whole, 
brought  into  perfect  unity  by  the  effective 
arrangement  of  the  lighting.  An  amusing  story 
is  told  of  the  circumstances  under  which  this 
picture  came  to  be  acquired  by  the  Gallery.  It 
was  sold  at  the  Demidoff  sale  at  Paris  in  1  868, 
when  Sir  William  Boxall,  then  Director  of  the 
National  Gallery,  was  outbid  by  the  Marquis  of 
Hertford,  who  secured  the  picture  for  nearly 
£7000.  On  his  death  it  passed  to  his  half-brother, 
Sir  Richard  Wallace.  Three  years  later  a  rather 
shabbily  dressed  individual  called  at  the  Gallery 
with  a  request  that  he  might  show  a  picture 
which  he  had  brought  with  him  to  the  Director. 
At  the  time  Sir  William  was  too  busy  to  go  into 
the  matter.  "  But  you  had  better  just  have  a 
glance — I  ask  no  more,"  said  the  visitor.  Sir 
William  again  refused,  but  the  persistent  stranger 
proceeded  to  uncover  the  picture  and  displayed 
to  the  Director's  amazement  the  masterpiece  of 
Terburg  which  he  had  vainly  endeavoured  to 
purchase  at  the  sale.  "  My  name  is  Wallace,  Sir 

69 


THE   NATIONAL    GALLERY 

Richard    Wallace,"    said    the    stranger    quietly, 
"  and  I  came  to  offer  this  picture  to  the  National 
Gallery."  "  I  nearly  fainted,"  Sir  William  related 
afterwards,  "  I  had  nearly  refused  the  Peace  of 
Minister — one  of  the  wonders  of  the  world." 

The  Gallery  had  to  wait  long  for  an  important 
work  of  Frans  Hals,  and  the  Family  Portrait 
(2285),  which  was  purchased  in  1908  for  £25,000, 
cannot  be  considered  one  of  the  painter's  most 
successful  efforts.  The  composition  is  ingenious ; 
the  children  are  painted  with  the  charm  of  frank 
reality ;  and  the  brushwork,  with  what  has  been 
described  as  "a  kind  of  animal  relish  in  the 
strokes  of  it."  is  a  constant  delight.  But  the 
accentuation  of  the  lights  on  the  lace  and  linen 
worn  by  every  member  of  the  group  creates 
a  rather  blotchy  effect,  while  an  awkwardness 
and  lack  of  animation  in  the  central  figure — the 
pere  de  famille — communicates  a  certain  feeling 
of  heaviness  to  the  whole  picture.  The  fact  is 
that  Hals  seems  to  have  been  happier  when  at 
work  upon  festive  scenes  more  congenial  to  his 
own  temperament,  such  as  the  groups  of  jolly 
burgomasters  at  Haarlem.  A  Mail's  Portrait '(1251) 
and  the  two  heads  recently  bequeathed  by  the 
late    Mr   George   Salting  give  more  evidence  of 

70 


THE    DUTCH    SCHOOL 

that  triumphant  ease  which  constitutes  the  great 
charm  of  this  extraordinarily  modern  old  master. 
Dutch  landscape   can   be  fully   studied  at  the 
National  Gallery  in  the  works  of  its  three  great- 
est   exponents — Hobbema,    Ruysdael  and  Cuyp. 
Of  the  half-dozen  Hobbemas  the  most  original  is 
The  Avenue,  Middleharnu  (830),  one  of  the  most 
popular  landscapes  in   the   collection.    Hobbema 
has    survived    the    depreciation    of    Ruskin — "a 
single  dusky  roll  of  Turner's  brush  is  more  truly 
expressive    of  the    infinity    of  foliage    than    the 
niggling    of  Hobbema  could   have  rendered  his 
canvas  if  he  had  worked  on   it  till   Doomsday " 
— for  in  spite  of  an  intrusive  and  possibly  inac- 
curate  detail   his   pictures  are    usually    full  of  a 
sense  of  repose  and  the  beauty  of  design,  and  in 
none   are    these  qualities  more  pleasing  than  in 
The  Avenue.  "  In  fact,  this  and  Yermeer's  View  of 
Delft   at    the   Hague/'    said   Mr  Arthur    Strong, 
"are    the    great   landscapes    of  the   seventeenth 
century.   Nothing  can  be  more  direct  or  uncom- 
promising   than     the    artist's    realism.     A    road 
bordered    on    either    side    with    meagre    poplars 
leads  straight    ahead   to   where   the   open  sea  is 
suggested  though  not  shown.  Whether  the  artist 
willed   it  or  not,    the   scene  is   eloquent  with   a 

7i 


THE    NATIONAL   GALLERY 

haunting  sort  of  poetry.  The  monotony,  the  dull 
sky,  the  trees  at  intervals,  picture  better  than 
many  a  professed  allegory  the  prosaic  limits  and 
routine  of  ordinary  experience." 

Ruysdael,  who  according  to  the  critic  just 
quoted  excelled  Hobbema  in  emotional  insight 
and  suggestion,  painted,  in  Ruskin's  opinion, 
merely  "good  furniture  pictures,  unworthy  of 
praise  and  undeserving  of  blame."  He  found  his 
material  not  only  in  the  flats  of  his  native  land 
but  also  in  the  wild  mountain  solitudes  of 
Norway,  the  scenery  with  that  fatal  sublimity 
which  has  such  a  disconcerting  trick  of  looking 
commonplace  on  canvas.  Here  we  have  typical 
examples  of  his  landscapes  of  the  waterfall 
variety  and  two  sympathetic  studies  of  single 
trees. 

Cuyp  did  for  landscape  what  de  Hooch  did 
for  the  genre  interior — he  made  it  a  background 
for  the  play  of  atmosphere  and  light.  All  his 
pictures  in  the  Gallery,  and  particularly  A  Land- 
scape with  Figures,  Evening  (53),  and  the  Large 
Dart  (96l)  show  that  his  main  preoccupation  was 
the  problem  of  sunlight  in  the  open  air.  He 
confined  himself  to  one  single  aspect  of  the 
problem,    the    rendering  of  the  golden  glow  of 

72 


Cornelius  van  her  Geest 
l'a>i  Dyck 


THE    DUTCH    SCHOOL 

late  afternoon,  and,  like  almost  all  the  Dutch 
painters,  contented  himself  with  reproducing 
indefinitely  the  particular  theme  which  he  had 
perfectly  mastered. 


73 


THE    FLEMISH    AND    GERMAN    SCHOOLS 

The   Primitives  of  the  northern  schools  are  less 
exhaustively    represented    in    the    Gallery    than 
those  of  Italy,  but  the  company  though  small  is 
select,  and   comprehends   all   the    great   masters 
— Van  Eyck,  M  ending,  Roger  van  der  Weyden, 
Gerard    David,    Mabuse.    Though    the    painting 
of   the    early    Flemings  is    delicate    and    perfect 
in   technique,   fascinating   in  its  combination   of 
childlike  naivete  and  profound  sincerity,  it  can- 
not be  said  to  hold  the  same  place  in  the  history 
of  art    as   that    of  the   early   Italians.    It  is  not 
merely    that   the   Flemish   school    devoted   itself 
to  expressing  "  the  angular  and  bony  sanctities  of 
the  North,"  while  Italy  then  as  always  possessed 
"the   fatal    gift   of  beauty."   The   difference  lies 
rather  in  the  fact  that  the  art  of  the  one  marked 
the  end  of  the  old  order,  while  that  of  the  other 
heralded  the  dawn  of  the  new.  The  art  of  Giotto 

74 


THE  FLEMISH  AND  GERMAN  SCHOOLS 

was  an  art  of  promise,  of  awakening  from  the 
dead,  an  aspiration  towards  a  new  ideal,  an 
attempt  to  render  painting  capable  of  expressing 
a  wider  intellectual  life,  and  therefore  in  a  sense 
belongs  to  the  present  rather  than  the  past.  The 
art  of  Van  Eyck  and  Memling  embodied  the 
conceptions  of  the  Middle  Ages,  and  a  mode  of 
life  that  was  passing  away.  With  a  minute  loveli- 
ness of  its  own,  it  was  nevertheless  a  finished  thing, 
looking  to  the  past  rather  than  to  the  future,  and 
therefore  it  had  in  it  no  seeds  of  development. 

The  first  impression  that  strikes  the  visitor  to 
the  Flemish  room  is  the  smallness  of  the  pictures. 
Fresco  painting  was  an  art  which  could  never  be 
acclimatised  in  the  humid  atmosphere  of  the  Low 
Countries.  Their  painters  were  obliged  by  the 
actual  physical  conditions  of  their  environment  to 
search  for  some  less  perishable  medium.  This  the 
brothers  Van  Eyck  discovered  in  a  preparation  of 
linseed  and  nut  oils.  This  medium  was  favour- 
able to  a  very  high  finish,  but  was  only  applicable 
to  work  on  a  small  scale.  Flemish  art  therefore 
was  necessarily  an  art  of  miniature.  The  second 
impression  which  these  pictures  make  is  that  of 
a  certain  affinity  with  the  craft  of  the  worker  in 
metals  and  precious  stones.  The  Flemish  painters 

75 


THE   NATIONAL    GALLERY 

seem  to  have  approached  the  graphic  arts  from 
the  point  of  view  not  of  draughtsmen  but  of  gold- 
smiths and  jewellers.  They  evince  no  feeling  for 
line  or  for  broad  effects  of  masses  of  colour.  They 
care  more  for  elaborate  detail,  an  illusion  of  hard 
metallic  surface,  and  sharp  points  of  light  like 
those  on  the  facets  of  jewels.  Their  pictures  have 
a  richness  and  sparkle  and  solidity  as  though  their 
inspiration  were  drawn  from  reliquaries  and 
precious  caskets.  It  might  almost  be  supposed 
that  they  were  the  work  of  men  who  had  been 
trained  as  jewellers. 

But  whatever  their  training,  their  achievement, 
measured  by  their  technical  perfection,  can  never 
cease  to  astonish.  The  work  of  the  brothers  Hu- 
bert and  Jan  Van  Eyck  is  an  amazing  phenomenon. 
Appearing  as  they  did,  suddenly,  without  any 
long  line  of  predecessors  to  explain  them,  they 
seem  to  have  reached  the  goal  of  complete  mastery 
of  execution  at  a  single  sti'ide.  "  The  first  Italian 
Renaissance,"  says  Fromentin,  "had  nothing  com- 
parable to  this.  And  in  the  particular  order  of  the 
sentiments  they  expressed,  and  of  the  subjects 
they  represented,  it  must  be  agreed  that  no  Lom- 
bard, Tuscan  or  Venetian  school  produced  any- 
thing   that    resembles   the    first   outburst  of  the 

76 


THE  FLEMISH  AND  GERMAN  SCHOOLS 

school  at  Bruges."  There  is  nothing  here  from 
the  work  of  the  elder  brother  Hubert,  but  Jan 
Van  Eyck  is  represented  by  that  brilliant  master- 
piece, Jan  Arnolfmi  and  his  Wife  (186).  "  It  is  one 
of  the  most  precious  possessions  of  the  national 
collection/'  says  Sir  Edward  Poynter,  "and,  in 
respect  of  its  marvellous  finish,  combined  with 
the  most  astounding  truth  of  imitation  and  effect, 
perhaps  the  most  remarkable  picture  in  the  world." 
Thanks  to  his  knowledge  of  the  chemistry  of  paint, 
the  painter's  colours  are  as  fresh  as  on  the  day  he 
mixed  them.  The  five-hundred-year-old  panel  is 
also  in  a  marvellously  fine  state  of  preservation, 
in  spite  of  undergoing  many  vicissitudes  of  for- 
tune—  it  was  discovered  by  General  Hay  in  a 
house  in  Brussels  where  he  was  taken  after  hav- 
ing been  wounded  at  the  battle  of  Waterloo. 

The  merchant,  a  gaunt  and  ungainly  figure, 
with  an  enormous  beaver  hat  crushing  down  upon 
his  head  and  a  shapeless  fur-trimmed  gown  de- 
scending to  just  above  his  thin  ankles,  stands  in 
the  midst  of  a  quietly  lighted  little  room,  holding 
his  wife's  hand  in  his  own.  The  woman  is  dressed 
in  a  long-skirted  gown  of  a  beautifully  rich  green 
colour,  against  which  her  delicate  white  hands 
show  like  an  ivory  carving.  There   is    something 

77 


THE   NATIONAL    GALLERY 

deferential  and  yielding  in  her  pose  that  sug- 
gests the  drooping  Madonnas  of  mediaeval  French 
sculpture.  Though  remorseless  in  its  fidelity  to 
fact,  there  is  nevertheless  a  tenderness  in  the 
portraiture,  hinting  at  a  certain  reverence  in  the 
painter  for  the  discreet  and  faithful  relationship 
existing  between  these  two  grave,  simple  beings. 
Their  own  character  of  discretion  and  simplicity 
is  impressed  too  upon  the  soberly  but  richly 
furnished  room.  Here  Van  Eyck  finds  full  scope 
for  his  delight  in  minute  detail  and  exquisite  finish. 
The  circular  mirror  hanging  upon  the  wall  at  the 
end  of  the  room  is  a  miracle  of  delicate  workman- 
ship. Its  convex  surface  reflects  all  the  contents  of 
the  room  and  also  a  door  showing  a  space  beyond, 
in  which  two  other  figures  may  be  distinguished. 
Into  the  frame  are  let  ten  diminutive  pictures  of 
the  ten  "moments"  of  the  Passion  of  Christ, 
designed  no  doubt  to  furnish  a  subject  for  the 
meditation  of  the  lady  while  engaged  in  the 
lengthy  and  intricate  business  of  arranging  her 
hair  and  headdress.  And  all  this  is  given  in  a  space 
of  not  much  bigger  than  the  size  of  a  five-shilling 
piece  !  The  mirror,  together  with  the  chaplet  of 
beads  hanging  by  the  side  of  it  and  the  brass 
chandelier,    gave    Van   Eyck  an  opportunity    for 

78 


THE  FLEMISH  AND  GERMAN  SCHOOLS 

introducing  those  points  of  light  as  seen  reflected 
by  metallic  and  glassy  surfaces,  the  delight  in 
which  he  shared  with  all  the  members  of  the 
early  Flemish  school.  The  carved  woodwork  of 
the  chair,  the  twig  broom  attached  to  it,  the  red 
hangings  of  the  bed,  the  strip  of  finely  woven 
carpet,  the  wooden  sandals,  the  oranges  on  the 
table,  placed  so  as  to  carry  the  light  into  a 
shadowy  corner — all  the  details  are  rendered 
with  the  same  zeal  and  fidelity  as  the  faces  of  the 
man  and  woman  themselves  ;  and  yet,  in  spite  of 
this  apparent  absence  of  discrimination,  in  the 
general  view  each  falls  at  once  into  its  own 
subordinate  place,  and  the  effect  of  the  picture, 
so  far  from  being  busy  and  overcrowded,  is  one  of 
almost  austere  simplicity.  Upon  the  wall  of  the 
room  the  painter  has  inscribed  his  signature,  "  Jan 
Van  Eyck  was  here,"  a  phrase  which  professes  with 
a  fine  mingling  of  modesty  and  pride  his  claim  to 
have  painted  exactly  what  he  saw. 

Mabuse  was  the  first  of  the  Flemings  to  be 
affected  by  the  influence  of  the  Italian  Renaissance. 
Until  lately  no  important  work  of  his  hung  in  the 
( iallery,  although  one  of  his  small  portraits,  A 
Man  and  Wife  (l(iS')),  painted  with  microscopic 
detail,  even  down    to  the    stubble  of   the  man's 

79 


THE   NATIONAL    GALLERY 

beard,  is  a  masterpiece  in  little.  In  1911,  howeyer, 
the  Gallery  secured  the  finest  example  of  his  first 
or  Flemish    period,    The    Adoration   of  the  Kings 
(2790),  from  the  collection  at  Castle  Howard.  The 
price  paid  was  £40,000  and,  great  though  the  sum 
appears  for  an  example  of  a  master  not  in  the  very 
first  rank,  it  is  said  that  the  vendor,  Lady  Carlisle, 
refused  an  offer  of  double  this  amount  made  by  a 
private  collector.  The  picture  has  been  described 
by  Mr  D.  S.  MacColl  as  "  a  cold-hearted  capable 
piece  of  picture  making."  Certainly  the  subject 
has  been  presented  with  more  inwardness  of  de- 
votional feeling,  but  never  with  greater  richness 
of  invention  and  more  indefatigable  minuteness 
of  handling.  The  characteristic  Flemish  delight  in 
the  painting  of  jewels  and  precious  embroideries 
is  very  marked,  and  indeed  the  painter  appears 
to  have    been  so  intent   upon  giving   the   kings 
gorgeous  raiment  that  he  has  neglected  to  give 
them  character.  The  two  kings,  standing  on  either 
side  of  the  group,  have  scarcely  more  vitality  or 
expression  than  a  tailor's  dummy,  and  seem    to 
exist    merely   for    the    sake    of  their    brocaded 
costumes   and  the  fantastically    designed  Gothic 
jewellery  of  their  crowns  and  of  the  cups  which 
they  bring  as   presents.    The  background   is   an 

80 


Jan  Arnolfini  and  ih>  Wife 

Jan   I  'an  Eyck 


Chapeau  de  Ton. 

Rubens 


THE  FLEMISH  AND  GERMAN  SCHOOLS 

elaborate  scheme  of  ruined  architecture,  already 
betraying  the  Italian  influence.  Perhaps  the  most 
successful  feature  of  the  picture  is  the  group  of 
large  angels  overhead,  and  particularly  happy  in 
conception  is  the  flight  of  lesser  angels  flocking 
like  birds  from  the  remote  distances  of  the  skies. 
No  greater  contrast  in  art  could  be  conceived 
than  that  between  the  meticulous,  patient 
brushwork  of  these  early  Flemish  masters  and 
the  large,  summary,  exuberant  manner  of  their 
great  successor,  Peter  Paul  Rubens.  Some 
fifteen  hundred  canvases  represent  the  fruit  of 
his  prolific  genius — not  to  mention  the  innumer- 
able productions  of  his  pupils,  of  which  he 
usually  supplied  the  design  and  added  the 
finishing  touches — and  of  these  the  National 
Gallery  possesses  about  a  dozen  superb  examples, 
including,  as  well  as  his  characteristic  historical 
and  allegorical  compositions,  specimens  of  his 
work  in  landscape  and  portraiture.  The  Abduction 
of  the  Sabine  Women  (38)  shows  the  master  in  the 
plenitude  of  his  amazing  vigour.  The  moment 
chosen  for  illustration  is  that  when  Romulus 
gave  the  signal  for  the  Roman  soldiers  to  kidnap 
the  daughters  of  the  Sabines,  and  the  scene 
represents  a  tumult  of  human  forms — muscular 
F  81 


THE   NATIONAL    GALLERY 

frames  of  warriors  in  steel  black  armour,  and 
resisting  figures  of  handsome  women,  not  Sabines 
but  pure-blooded  Flemings,  with  dazzling  arms 
and  shoulders,  clad  in  the  sumptuous  silks  and 
velvets  of  sixteenth-century  costumes.  "  A 
miracle  of  agitation,"  so  R.  A.  M.  Stevenson 
describes  it,  "a  flush  tide  of  the  richest  colour, 
which  positively  seems  to  boil  up  in  swirling 
eddies  of  harmonious  form.  Its  whole  surface 
is  swept  by  lines  which  rush  each  other  on  like 
the  rapid  successive  entrances  of  an  excited 
stretto,  till  the  violent  movement  seems  to 
undulate  the  entire  pattern  of  the  picture." 
The  same  exuberant  energy  and  joie  de  vivre 
animate  The  Triumph  of  Silenus  (853),  in  which 
the  jolly  drunkard,  a  mass  of  "  too  too  solid  flesh," 
is  borne  along  by  a  rollicking  crew  of  laughing 
nymphs  and  leering  satyrs.  These  works  con- 
stitute a  kind  of  rhetoric  in  painting,  an  eloquent 
and  sonorous  language  issuing  in  fluent  and 
glowing  periods,  which  perhaps  the  painter  had 
learned  to  adopt  in  the  execution  of  those  mural 
decorations  for  halls  and  palaces  where  he  had 
to  raise  his  voice,  as  it  were,  in  order  to  make 
himself  heard  throughout  a  vast  space.  They 
are  the  works  too  of  a    man  painting  in  haste, 

82 


THE  FLEMISH  AND  GERMAN  SCHOOLS 

with  whom  there  was  scarcely  a  pause  between 
thought  and  action.  For  Rubens  was  a  courtier 
and  a  politician  as  well  as  a  painter,  and 
occasionally  assumed  the  role  of  an  ambassador. 
Sometimes  he  lent  his  art  to  the  service  of 
diplomacy,  as  in  The  Blessings  of  Peace  (46),  which 
he  presented  to  Charles  I.  when  he  came  to  the 
court  of  St  James's  as  the  accredited  ambassador 
of  the  King  of  Spain,  with  the  object  of  persuad- 
ing the  English  king  to  conclude  peace  with  that 
country.  The  picture  was  sold  by  the  Parliament 
after  King  Charles's  death  for  the  paltry  sum 
of  £  L  03  and  nearly  two  hundred  years  later  was 
bought  for  £3000  by  the  Marquis  of  Stafford  who 
presents  1  it  to  the  nation.  It  was  possibly  while 
painting  this  picture  that  an  English  courtier 
asked  R.ib^ns,  "Does  the  ambassador  of  his 
Catholic  Mijesty  amuse  himself  with  painting?" 
To  which  he  replied,  "  I  amuse  myself  some- 
times with  being  an  ambassador." 

The  single  portrait  by  Rubens  which  the 
Gallery  possesses,  the  Ckapeau  de  Poil  (852),  is 
one  of  the  most  celebrated  and  successful  of  his 
essays  in  this  branch  of  art.  In  general  it  may 
be  said  that  Rubens  lacked  that  scrupulous 
attention,     that    attitude    of    deference    to    his 

83 


THE   NATIONAL   GALLERY 

subject,  which  is    necessary  if  the  painter  is  to 
possess  himself  of  the  reticent  inner  spirit  which 
cannot    be    captured    by    a    seizure    of    merely 
external    accidents.     He    makes    his    women    in 
particular   conform    to   a    preconceived    type    of 
beauty  which  we  recognise  as  peculiarly  his  own. 
With  her  full  rounded  forehead  and  small  chin, 
her  large  inexpressive  eyes,  her  ample  swelling 
contours,  Helene  Fourment,  the  painter's  sister-in- 
law,  the  subject  of  the  Chapeau  clePoil,  emphatically 
belongs  to  that  ideal  Avhich  consists  in  voluptuous- 
ness l-ather  than  grace  of  form  and  in  a  certain 
seductive  charm   rather  than  refinement  of  intel- 
lect or  depth  of  character.  Our  attention  is  directed 
less  to  the  personality  of  the  sitter  than  to  the 
marvellous  effect  of  the  reflected  light  which  plays 
upon   her   face.    "  No  one    who    has  not  beheld 
this  masterpiece  of  painting,"  says  Dr  Waagen, 
"  can  form  any  conception  of  the  transparency  and 
brilliancy    with    which    the  local    colours  in   the 
features  and  complexion,  though  under  the  shadow 
of  a  broad-brimmed  hat,  are  brought  out  and  made 
to  tell,  while  the  different  parts  are  rounded  and 
relieved,  with  the  finest  knowledge  and  use  of 
reflected  lights." 

The  Chateau  de  Stein  (66)  affords  a  magnificent 

84 


THE  FLEMISH  AND  GERMAN  SCHOOLS 

example  of  the  achievement  of  Rubens  in  land- 
scape. On  the  left  in  the  midst  of  a  group 
of  lofty  trees  stands  a  country  mansion,  said 
to  be  his  own  residence,  with  steep  roof  and  tall 
chimneys ;  the  rest  of  the  picture  is  a  broad 
stretch  of  fertile  plain  bathed  in  a  golden 
autumnal  light.  Perhaps  no  landscape  ever  more 
completely  satisfied  that  delight  in  sheer  spacious- 
ness which  the  eye  always  experiences  in  roaming 
over  a  vast  expanse  of  open  country.  It  is  moreover 
an  amazing  instance  of  Rubens's  power  of  recon- 
structing a  scene  from  memory,  for  this  typically 
Flemish  scene  was  painted,  not  in  Flanders,  but 
at  Genoa. 

Van  Dyck,  the  greatest  of  the  pupils  of 
Rubens,  may  almost  be  claimed  as  the  father 
of  the  English  school  of  portraiture.  During 
the  latter  part  of  his  life  he  lived  in  England, 
was  appointed  painter  to  court  and  received 
a  knighthood  from  the  king ;  he  was  the 
fashionable  portrait  painter  of  his  age — he  painted 
some  three  hundred  portraits  while  in  England — 
and  from  his  art  the  masters  of  the  succeeding 
century,  Gainsborough  and  Reynolds,  drew  no 
little  of  their  inspiration.  Of  his  half-dozen 
portraits    at     the     National    Gallery     the     most 

85 


THE   NATIONAL   GALLERY 

important  is  that  of  Charles  the  First  (1172),  sold 
by  one  parliament  after  the  king's  execution 
for  £150  and  bought  by  another  in  1885  from 
the  Duke  of  Marlborough  for  £17,500.  It  is  the 
most  imposing  of  the  four  and  twenty  portraits 
that  Van  Dyck  painted  of  the  English  king,  in 
whom  he  found  the  ideal  of  the  Cavalier  type, 
the  dignity  and  refinement  of  which  apparently 
pleased  him  more  than  the  coarser,  more  energetic 
manhood  of  Rubens.  The  king,  clad  in  armour 
and  carrying  a  marshal's  baton,  is  mounted  on 
a  powerful  dun-coloured  charger.  The  contrast 
with  the  massive  proportions  of  the  animal  gives 
the  king's  figure  an  additional  slightness  and 
elegance;  his  bearing  is  dignified,  with  a  sug- 
gestion of  disdainful  defiance ;  his  expression 
is  one  of  melancholy,  together  with  a  fatal 
insouciance.  Van  Dyck,  Cavalier  in  all  his 
sympathies,  could  hardly  help  poetising  the 
Prince  of  Cavaliers,  suppressing  the  obstinacy 
and  duplicity  of  his  character,  dwelling  only  on 
his  grace,  his  courage,  his  refinement.  Is  it 
merely  in  the  light  of  after  events  that  we 
seem  to  divine  in  this  lonely  figure  some  hint  of 
fatality,  a  certain  air  of  foreknowledge  of  disaster, 
or   had    the   painter   himself   some   premonition 

86 


THE  FLEMISH  AND  GERMAN  SCHOOLS 

of  the  tragedy  lying  in  wait  for  that  unhappy 
monarch  ? 

In  the  portrait  of  Cornelius  van  tier  Geest  (52) 
we  see  another  type,  that  of  the  scholar  and 
amateur  of  the  arts,  with  which  Van  Dyck  was 
also  in  special  sympathy.  It  is  said  that  the 
painter  regarded  this  work  as  his  masterpiece, 
and  carried  it  about  with  him  to  show  to  his 
patrons  as  a  sample  of  what  he  could  do  in 
portraiture.  It  is  the  portrait  of  an  elderly  man, 
grey-bearded,  with  deep-set  thoughtful  eyes,  the 
face  encircled  in  a  ruff.  "  The  eyes  are  miracles 
of  drawing  and  painting,"  said  G.  F.  Watts. 
"They  are  a  little  tired  and  overworked,  and 
do  not  so  much  see  anything  as  indicate  the 
thoughtful  brain  behind.  How  wonderful  the 
flexible  mouth !  with  the  light  shining  through 
the  sparse  moustache.  How  tremulously  yet 
firmly  painted.  .  .  .  Not  a  touch  is  put  in  for 
what  is  understood  by  f  effect.'  Dexterous  in 
a  superlative  degree,  there  is  not  in  the  ordinary 
sense  a  dexterous  dab  doing  duty  for  honourable 
serious  work ;  nothing  done  to  look  well  at  one 
distance  or  another,  but  to  be  right  at  every 
distance." 

The     German    school     is    conspicuous   in    the 

37 


THE   NATIONAL   GALLERY 

Gallery  chiefly  in  the  portraits  of  Diirer  and 
Holbein.  Until  lately  Diirer  was  unrepresented 
in  the  Gallery,  but  the  recent  purchase  of  the 
artist's  Portrait  of  his  Father  (1938)  enables  us 
to  see  him  at  his  best  both  as  draughtsman  and 
colourist.  There  is  always  something  peculiarly 
intimate  in  a  painter's  portrait  of  his  parents,  but 
in  depth  of  insight  and  tenderness  of  sympathy 
there  is  none  that  surpasses  this  earnest  study  of 
a  man  who,  as  Diirer  himself  records,  had  passed 
his  life  in  stern  labour,  had  been  proved  by  many 
trials  and  adversities,  was  a  man  of  few  words, 
and  peaceable  to  all,  and  had  won  praise  from  all 
who  knew  him  for  his  honourable  and  upright 
life.  An  inscription  at  the  top  of  the  panel  records 
that  the  age  of  the  father  was  seventy  and  that 
of  the  son  twenty-six. 

Holbein  stood  in  something  of  the  same  relation 
to  Henry  VIII.  as  Velazquez  to  Philip  IV.  of 
Spain ;  both  painters  created  their  royal  masters 
for  posterity,  and  both  monarchs  had  a  just  idea 
of  the  genius  of  their  painters.  Said  King  Henry 
to  one  of  his  courtiers  who  had  spoken  slightingly 
of  the  German  artist,  "  I  tell  you  that  of  seven 
peasants  I  can  make  seven  lords,  but  not  one 
Holbein !  "  Though  no  portrait  of  Henry  appears 

88 


A  Canon    \\i>  his  Patron  Saints 


(4 
< 


o     ? 


C 
D 


THE  FLEMISH  AND  GERMAN  SCHOOLS 

in  the  Gallery,  Holbein's  connection  with  Eng- 
land is  illustrated  by  two  of  his  finest  works. 
The  Ambassadors  and  Christina  of  Denmark.  The 
Ambassadors  (1314)  stands  next  in  importance 
amoner  the  master's  works  to  the  Darmstadt 
Madonna.  It  presents  the  portraits  of  two  men, 
standing  in  somewhat  stiff  and  inexpressive 
attitudes  on  either  side  of  a  wooden  stand,  the 
one  the  French  ambassador  in  England,  wearing 
a  heavy  gold  chain  and  clad  in  the  rich  bulky 
costume  of  the  period,  the  other  the  Bishop  of 
Lavaur,  enveloped  in  a  sable-lined,  long-sleeved 
gown  of  mulberry  and  black  brocade.  The  pro- 
portions of  both  the  figures  are  short  in  relation 
to  the  heads,  the  effect  of  squatness  being  ex- 
aggerated in  that  of  the  ambassador  by  the 
breadth  of  the  coat  and  its  swelling  sleeves.  On 
the  shelves  of  the  stand  are  a  number  of 
accessories,  a  Turkish  rug,  a  celestial  globe  and 
other  astronomical  instruments,  a  lute,  a  case  of 
flutes  and  an  open  music-book,  all  strongly  and 
beautifully  painted,  with  great  minuteness  but  no 
confusion  of  detail.  A  curious  bone-like  object 
stretching  across  the  mosaic  floor  in  the  fore- 
ground has  given  rise  to  much  speculation  as  to 
its  nature  and  meaning.  It  appears  to  be  a  human 

89 


THE   NATIONAL   GALLERY 

skull  seen  in  distorted  perspective,  which  has 
been  conjectured  to  be  a  punning  allusion  to  the 
artist's  name — kohl  bein  or  hollow  bone.  The 
colouring  is  brilliant  and  harmonious,  and  has 
retained  its  freshness  quite  undimmed  by  time. 
The  picture,  it  is  interesting  to  note,  is  painted 
on  ten  separate  boards  joined  together  vertically, 
a  fact  which  may  have  had  some  effect  upon  the 
planning  of  the  composition. 

The  portrait  of  Christina  of  Denmark  (247 5),  the 
sixteen-year-old  widow  of  the  Duke  of  Milan, 
was  painted  by  Holbein  for  Henry  VIII.,  who  at 
one  time  thought  of  inviting  her  to  share  his 
throne.  Her  reply  to  this  proposition  is  said  to 
have  been,  "  Tell  his  Majesty  of  England  that  if 
I  had  two  heads  I  would  willingly  put  one  at  his 
disposal,  having  only  one  I  prefer  to  keep  it  for 
myself."  The  retort  probably  has  about  as  much 
authenticity  as  most  of  the  bons  mots  of  history, 
although  judging  by  the  lurking  humour  in  her 
face  we  can  well  believe  that  she  was  capable  of 
it.  In  the  three  hours'  sitting  which  she  gave  to 
Holbein  he  secured  an  imperishable  record  of  a 
vivid  and  intriguing  personality.  She  stands 
somewhat  primly,  habited  entirely  in  black,  with 
her  pretty  hands  clasped  in  front  of  her  holding 

90 


THE  FLEMISH  AND  GERMAN  SCHOOLS 

a  glove.  Her  shadowless  white  face  arrests  the 
attention  with  an  alluring  subtle  expression  which 
rather  baffles  interpretation.  The  patient  scrutinis- 
ing gaze  and  the  quiet  smile  about  the  lips  hint 
at  a  mind  busy  with  its  own  secret  commentary 
upon  the  spectacle  of  life,  neither  astonished 
nor  perplexed  but  secure  in  its  own  judgments. 
The  face  has  a  subtle  suggestion  of  mobility, 
as  though  its  present  equilibrium  of  emotion 
might  at  any  moment  be  upset  by  a  mood 
of  petulance   or    laughter. 


9i 


VI 


THE    SPANISH    SCHOOL 


"  I  confess  I  have  very  little  admiration  for  the 
Spanish  school  generally,"  said  Sir  Charles 
Eastlake,  and  consequently  we  find  that  of  the 
five  hundred  and  fourteen  pictures  which  were 
added  to  the  Gallery  during  his  directorship 
Spain  was  represented  by  only  three  !  The  fact  is 
that,  until  comparatively  recent  times,  Italy  so 
dazzled  the  eyes  of  connoisseurs  that  they  were 
more  or  less  indifferent  to  the  glories  of  the  sister 
peninsula.  Marshal  Soult  was  perhaps  a  little  in 
advance  of  the  taste  of  his  age  when,  during  the 
Peninsular  War,  he  sent  skirmishers  ahead  of  his 
army,  armed  with  a  "  Dictionnaire  des  professeurs 
des  Beaux-arts  en  Espagne,"  to  identify  the  most 
famous  canvases,  which  he  subsequently  compelled 
their  owners  to  part  with  at  his  own  terms.  But 
even  had  Wellington  shown  a  similar  enterprise 
and  lack  of  scruple,  there  was  at  that  time  no 
national  collection  to  receive  these  very  covetable 

92 


THE    SPANISH    SCHOOL 

spoils  of  war.  Some  endeavour  has  been  made  of 
late  to  remove  the  reproach  of  poverty  from  the 
Spanish  school  at  the  Gallery,  but  much  still 
remains  to  be  done.  Although  not  a  single  work 
of  El  Greco  or  of  Goya  of  any  importance  has  yet 
been  acquired,  we  should  be  thankful,  however, 
that  we  are  able  to  see  Velazquez  at  least  as  well 
as,  if  not  better  than,  in  any  public  gallery  out  of 
Spain. 

The  first  in  the  line  of  the  great  Spanish 
painters,  Theotocopuli,  better  known  as  El  Greco, 
has  been  the  last  in  winning  recognition.  The 
distortion  of  his  form  and  the  strangeness  of  his 
colour  have  caused  him  to  be  regarded  as  bizarre, 
and  lacking  in  the  primal  sanities  of  great  art. 
It  would  be  impossible  to  form  a  just  conception 
of  his  genius  from  the  two  small  works  to  be  seen 
here,  although  they  are  sufficiently  typical  of  his 
highly  individual  manner.  Christ  driving  the 
Traders  out  of  the  Temple  (14.">7)  is  full  of  that 
tumultuous  violence  and  strained  gesture  which 
are  characteristic  of  the  painter's  temper.  The 
portrait  known  as  St  Jerome  (1122)  shows  the 
same  energy  of  exaggeration.  The  gaunt  elonga- 
tion of  the  face  and  the  emphatic  gesture  of  the 
hand — the  thumb  turned  resolutely  down  on  the 

93 


THE   NATIONAL   GALLERY 

page  of  the  book — give  together  an  extraordinary 
expression  of  defiant  and  remorseless  determina- 
tion. The  type  is  that  of  the  churchman  of  all 
time,  or  perhaps  rather  a  reductio  ad  absurdum 
of  the  type,  austere,  dogmatic,  inquisitorial. 
Though  by  descent  a  Greek,  and  by  training  an 
Italian,  El  Greco  nevertheless  expressed  more 
intensely  than  perhaps  any  native  painter  has 
ever  done  those  qualities  of  savagery  and  intran- 
sigence that  lie  but  a  little  way  beneath  the 
grave  surface  of  the  Spanish  character. 

Equally  dramatic  and  passionate  is  Zurbai-an, 
in  his  Franciscan  Monk  (230),  but  in  this  case  the 
emotion  is  accompanied  by  a  strong  grasp  of  that 
material  reality  which  Greco's  visionary  gaze 
altogether  ignored.  As  a  rule,  prayer  has  been 
rendered  in  art  with  a  rather  mawkish  senti- 
mentality, chiefly  expressed  by  a  strained  upturn- 
ing of  the  eyes ;  here  the  eyes  are  almost  hidden 
in  shadow,  yet  the  fervour  of  the  man's  soul  is  as 
piercing  as  a  sharp  cry.  Most  of  the  painters  who 
tnrned  out  religious  pictures  to  supply  the  demands 
of  the  Church,  when  the  Church  was  the  principal 
patron  of  art,  probably  painted  such  subjects 
because  they  were  obliged  to;  Zurbaran  was  a 
religious  painter  because  his  temperament  would 

94 


THE    SPANISH    SCHOOL 

not  allow  him  to  be  anything  else.  The  man 
who  painted  the  Franciscan  Monk  was  himself  a 
monk  at  heart.  "  He  is  a  Spanish  Fra  Angelico," 
says  Mr  Havelock  Ellis,  "that  is  to  say,  a  very 
realistic  Angelico,  whose  knees  rest  firmly  on  the 
earth."  How  firmly  they  rest  on  the  earth  we 
may  judge  from  The  Adoration  of  the  Shepherds 
(235),  a  work  formerly  attributed  to  Velazquez. 
Zurbaran  was  the  son  of  a  small  farmer  in  the 
province  of  Estremadura,  and  here  we  have  a 
wonderful  realisation  of  the  peasants  whom  he 
knew  and  loved  so  well,  with  their  intentness 
of  expression  and  their  simple  direct  gestures 
offering  their  country  gifts  of  yearling  lambs  and 
baskets  of  bread.  The  same  directness  of  vision  is 
seen  in  the  portrait  of  a  Lady  as  St  Margaret 
(1930),  joined  to  a  most  consummate  craftsman- 
ship. All  these  pictures  reveal  the  vigour  and 
simplicity  of  the  peasant  mind,  a  forthright  way 
of  seeing  things  without  any  compromise  or 
complexity. 

No  one  can  be  said  truly  to  know  Velazquez 
who  has  not  seen  him  at  Madrid.  His  works  have 
travelled  little  compared  with  those  of  other 
great  masters  who  worked  in  oils,  but  of  those 
which  have  left  Spain  England  possesses  a  liberal 

95 


THE   NATIONAL   GALLERY 

share.  Indeed  Justi  says  that  if  all  the  works  of 
Velazquez  scattered  among  the  various  private 
galleries  in  England  could  be  brought  together, 
they  would  form  a  collection  rivalling  that  at  the 
Prado.  But  if  the  student  of  Velazquez  cannot  go 
to  the  Prado,  without  question  the  next  best 
place  for  him  to  betake  himself  to  is  the  Spanish 
room  at  the  National  Gallery.  To  be  sure  the 
experts  have  been  busy  here  insinuating  their 
doubts  as  to  whether  this  or  that  work  is  verit- 
ably by  the  hand  of  the  master,  and  in  some  cases 
they  must  be  allowed  to  have  made  good  their 
charges  of  wrong  attribution.  In  the  case  of 
The  Adoration  of  the  Shepherds  Velazquez's  loss 
has  been  Zurbaran's  gain.  The  ascription  to 
Velazquez  of  The  Dead  Warrior  (741)  is  little 
more  than  a  pious,  or  perhaps  rather  an  impious, 
opinion ;  Senor  de  Beruete  has  his  doubts  about 
the  authenticity  of  the  gallant  Admiral  Pulido 
Pareja,  and  assigns  The  Betrothal  to  an  Italian 
artist,  Luca  Giordano ;  Sir  W.  Armstrong  con- 
jectures the  full-length  portrait  of  Philip  IV.  to 
be  by  Mazo ;  a  year  or  two  ago  the  report  that 
the  signature  of  a  pupil  had  been  discovered  on  the 
Rokeby  Venus  sent  the  authorities  peering  at  the 
canvas  through  their  magnifying-glasses  without 

96 


>!   I   HESS    OK    Ml  KAN 

//■•//•tin 


Philip  [V 

l'elas<]uez 


THE    SPANISH    SCHOOL 

however  succeeding  in  finding  the  tell-tale 
initials.  Passing  over  all  these  dubious  works 
except  the  last,  which  we  can  on  no  account 
surrender,  we  are  left  with  Christ  in  the  House  of 
Martha,  admittedly  an  early  work,  Christ  at  the 
Column,  The  Wild  Boar  Hunt,  together  with  a 
sketch,  possibly  utilised  in  painting  it,  entitled 
A  Duel  in  the  Prado,  the  portrait  bust  of  Philip 
IV.  and  Veims  and  Cupid. 

The  Wild  Boar  Hunt  (197),  though  its  authen- 
ticity is  undoubted,  has  been  damaged  by  fire  and 
restoration.  Lord  Cowley,  to  whom  it  was  given 
by  Ferdinand  VII.  of  Spain,  sent  it  to  a  picture 
dealer  to  be  relined.  In  the  process  the  use  of 
an  overheated  iron  destroyed  a  portion  of  the 
surface.  Dreading  the  consequences  of  his  blunder, 
the  dealer  was  on  the  verge  of  despair  when 
Lance,  a  painter  of  flower  and  fruit  pieces,  sug- 
gested that  he  should  put  the  damaged  canvas 
to  rights.  He  repainted  "out  of  his  head"  the 
groups  in  the  foreground  on  the  left  and  some  of 
the  middle  distance,  and,  as  he  ingeniously  put 
it,  "my  own  style  of  painting  enabled  me  to  keep 
pretty  near  the  mark."  Shortly  afterwards  he  had 
an  opportunity  of  putting  his  own  pretensions  to 
the  test.  When  the  picture  was  being  exhibited 

G  97 


THE   NATIONAL    GALLERY 

he  met  two  connoisseurs  of  his  acquaintance  and 
challenged  them  with  the  remark :  "  It  looks  to 
me  as  if  it  had  been  a  good  deal  repainted."  "  No  ; 
you're  wrong  there/'  was  the  gratifying  reply, 
"  it  is  remarkably  free  from  repaints."  A  compari- 
son of  the  restored  picture  with  Goya's  copy  of  it 
in  its  original  state  suggests  however  that  Lance 
may  have  somewhat  exaggerated  the  extent  of 
his  alterations. 

Beruete's  remark  that  Velazquez  spent  a  large 
part  of  his  time  in  chanting  a  hymn  to  ugliness 
was  probably  prompted  by  the  number  of  canvases 
which  he  devoted  to  portraying  the  heavy 
features  of  the  sombre  house  of  Hapsburg  and  the 
strange  creatures,  dwarfs  and  buffoons,  attached 
to  the  Court.  But  for  Velazquez,  where  there  was 
atmosphere,  beauty  was  never  lacking,  and  ugliness 
was  only  an  ugly  name  for  life  and  character.  Mr 
Havelock  Ellis  indeed  ingeniously  suggests  that 
the  necessity  of  perpetually  painting  a  busy 
monarch  like  Philip  IV.,  absorbed  in  affairs  of 
state  and  pleasure,  who  could  never  spare  much 
time  for  a  sitting,  was  of  advantage  to  his  art, 
obliging  him  to  adopt  swift,  simple  methods  and 
an  impressionistic  manner  which  he  might  other  - 
wise  never  have   so  completely  evolved.    In  the 

98 


THE    SPANISH   SCHOOL 

marvellous  bust  portrait  of  Philip  IF.  (745)  we 
have  an  instance  of  his  method  of  treating  the 
unlovely  Hapsburg  facial    type,  attenuating  and 
disguising  nothing,  but  dignifying  it  by  the  force 
of  character  and  converting  it  by  sheer  brilliancy 
of  brushwork  into  a  thing  of  beauty.  Few  portraits 
in  the  world  give  the  spectator  the  same  certi- 
tude of  being  in  the  presence  of  a  living  person- 
ality. He  has  not  only  painted  Philip  IV.  in  the 
flesh,   the  lank,  pale  hair,  the  high  but  unintel- 
lectual   forehead,   the  dull   and  weary   eyes,  the 
flaccid  cheeks,  the  ponderous  lower  jaw — he  has 
painted    also     the    sombre,    twilit    spirit    of    the 
monarch  doomed  to  preside  over  the  decadence 
of    a    death-struck    empire,    with    strength    and 
understanding   insufficient   for   his   task,   bearing 
himself  with  a  melancholy  dignity,  all  but  worn 
out    by    that    uneasiness    which    oppresses    the 
head    that    wears    a    crown.    The   portrait    seems 
to  sum  up  in  a  single  poignant  image  the  stifling 
atmosphere    of    the    joyless     Spanish    court     of 
the    counter-Reformation,    and    brings     to    mind 
that    significant  anecdote    of    Philip's    father,    of 
whom  it  is  said  that  once  when  he  heard  a  man 
laughing  he  remarked  :  "  Either  he  is  mad  or  he 
is  reading  Don  Quixote!"  On  no  other  terms  was 

99 


THE   NATIONAL   GALLERY 

laughter  intelligible  within  the  gloomy  precincts 
of  the  Escorial. 

The  group  of  Velazquez's  works  was  crowned 
by  the  acquisition  of  the  Venus  and  Cupid  (2057), 
in  1906.  When  the  picture  was  on  the  point  of 
being  sold  out  of  the  country,  the  National  Art 
Collections  Fund  came  to  the  rescue  and  raised 
by  subscription  the  ,£45,000  necessary  for  its 
purchase.  It  has  the  distinction  of  being  the  only 
female  nude  that  Velazquez  ever  painted.  Venus, 
lying  upon  a  couch  of  silvery-grey,  rests  her  head, 
which  is  turned  away  from  the  spectator,  upon 
her  hand,  and  looks  at  herself  in  a  mirror  sup- 
ported by  a  kneeling  cupid.  There  is  here  none 
of  the  idealistic  grace  of  the  conventional  goddess, 
but  just  the  frankly  realistic  vision  of  a  woman, 
the  beauty  of  which  lies  in  the  perfect  flow  of  the 
bounding  lines  of  the  figure  and  the  exquisite 
modulations  of  the  back.  The  picture  is  dis- 
tinguished perhaps  more  than  any  other  of  his 
works  by  that  quality  which  places  Velazquez 
apart  from  any  other  painter  who  ever  lived — 
a  quality  of  aristocratic  reserve,  of  emotionless 
detachment,  as  of  one  who  regarded  as  irrelevant 
any  personal  comment  of  his  own,  but  was  content 
to  state  facts  with  a  marmoreal  coldness  and  pre- 

100 


THE    SPANISH    SCHOOL 

cision.  Beneath  it  might  well  be  written  :  "  Beauty 
is  truths  truth  beauty — that  is  all  ye  know  on 
earth  and  all  ye  need  to  know." 

Velazquez  stands  alone  in  Spain,  for  the 
Spanish  spirit  is  essentially  umesthetic,  perhaps 
even  anti-aesthetic.  It  is  concerned  with  art 
chiefly  as  an  expression  of  character  and  drama. 
Velazquez  never  took  sides — as  Xurbaran,  for 
instance,  vehemently  took  a  side  when  he  painted 
his  passionate  monk  in  prayer.  He  is  apathetic 
to  everything  except  beauty.  And  that  beauty  he 
found  first  and  last  in  the  silvery  ambience  of 
the  atmosphere,  that  great  lustrating  element 
which  purifies  every  object  that  it  touches.  But 
to  understand  how  he  realised  this  beauty  it  is 
necessary  to  stand  in  that  little  room  in  the  Prado 
in  which  is  hung  the  miracle  of  Las  Meninas. 

As  the  fame  of  Velazquez  has  increased  that 
of  Murillo  has  decreased.  In  critical  as  well  as 
popular  estimation  he  once  stood  at  the  head 
of  the  Spanish  school.  His  canvases  were  the 
favourite  spoils  of  Marshal  Soult  in  the  Peninsular 
War.  Nowadays  when  the  first  commandment 
which  the  high  priests  of  art  criticism  impose 
upon  artists  is  written  "  Thou  shalt  not  be 
sentimental,"   he   has   been   degraded  nearly  to 

IOI 


THE   NATIONAL    GALLERY 

the  level  of  Greuze,  and  in  the  reaction  against 
the  facile  picturesqueness  of  his  work  many  of 
its  genuine  pictorial  qualities  have  been  over- 
looked. The  National  Gallery  possesses  no  speci- 
men of  those  "  Conceptions/'  types  of  "gipsy 
Madonnahood "  as  Ruskin  called  them,  which 
formed  his  speciality.  But  these  apotheoses  of 
"  pretty  peasant  girls,  posing  in  beautiful  robes 
that  do  not  belong  to  them,  and  simulating 
ecstatic  emotions  they  have  never  felt,"  are  of 
less  solid  worth  than  his  frankly  secular  scenes 
of  the  peasant  life  of  Andalusia.  No  better 
example  of  these  could  be  found  than  A  Boy 
Drinking  (1286),  which  is  almost  free  from  the 
very  self-conscious  picturesqueness  of  most  of  his 
beggar  boys.  There  is  all  of  what  we  understand 
by  the  South  in  this  picture,  its  rich  sun-stained 
colour,  its  eager  sensuous  delight,  its  mingling 
of  animation  with  sleepy  indolence.  Murillo's 
naturalism  has  here  had  free  play ;  the  gesture 
of  the  lifted  hand  and  arm  is  finely  observed, 
and  the  luminous  black,  squat-shouldered  bottle, 
imprisoning  the  luscious  vintage  of  Seville, 
"cool'd  a  long  age  in  the  deep-delved  earth," 
is  painted  with  a  manifest  gusto.  It  is  a  bottle 
of  character,  a  bottle  with  a  soul  ! 

102 


THE    SPANISH    SCHOOL 

The   two   portraits   and   two  studies  by  Goya 
suggest    rather    than    display     the     many-sided 
genius   of  the  last  of  the  great  Spaniards.  The 
sketches  entitled   The   Picnic  and   The  Bewitched 
(14.71,    1472)  show  him  in   his  gay  and  fantastic 
moods.    His    unflinching    realism    and    power    of 
penetration  is   revealed  in   the  vivid  Portrait  of 
Dr  Feral  (1951 ),  conceived  in  a  delicate  scheme 
of  grey.  But   the  individuality  of  the  painter  is 
most  forcefully  expressed  in  the  Portrait  of  Dona 
Isabel  Corbo  de  Porcel  (1473).    Perhaps  no  other 
painter  could  have  expressed  with  the  same  pas- 
sion and  precision   the  ambiguous  charm  of  this 
half-fascinating,  half-repelling  woman,  with  her 
dark  dilated  eyes,  her  coarse  full  lips,  her  artfully 
disordered  hair,  her  whole  attitude  alert,  daring, 
provocative.  He  has  been  remorseless  in  exposing 
the  rouge  on  her  cheeks,  the  kohl  on  her  eyelids, 
the  belladonna  in  her  eyes.   But  he  has  given  her 
something  of  his  own  exuberance  and  throbbing 
intensity  of  life.  This  cynical,  almost  brutal,  vision 
is    as   equally   far    removed  from   the   reserve  of 
Velazquez  as  from  the  sentimentalism  of  Murillo. 
For   a    like    expression    of   extravagant    energy 
we  have   to  go  back   to   El  Greco,  and  turning 
from  this  portrait  to  the  hitter's  austere  ecclesi- 

103 


THE   NATIONAL    GALLERY 

astic,  beneath  an  utter  contrast  of  type  we 
recognise  the  same  passionate  feeling  for  per- 
sonality which  is  at  the  root  of  all  typically 
Spanish  art. 


104 


o 


— 

a 

V. 

-„-- 

< 

-*» 

■s. 

Dona  Isabel 

Goya 


VII 

THE    FRENCH    SCHOOL 

The  genius  of  painting  in  Europe  has  been 
migratory,  visiting  each  of  the  great  Western 
nations  in  turn  but  never  preserving  its  domicile 
for  long.  After  brooding  over  Italy  in  the  fifteenth 
and  sixteenth  centuries,  it  winged  westwards, 
dwelling  briefly  in  Spain  and  the  Low  Countries 
in  the  seventeenth,  passing  over  to  England  in 
the  eighteenth  and  finally  settling  in  France 
in  the  nineteenth.  Thus  the  latest  of  the  great 
European  schools  of  painting  flourished  during 
the  period  when  the  National  Gallery  was  in 
process  of  formation.  The  minds  of  those  re- 
sponsible for  the  creation  of  a  collection  aiming 
at  being  representative  of  the  history  of  painting 
must,  however,  necessarily  be  directed  to  the 
art  of  the  past  rather  than  of  the  present,  and 
the  directors  of  the  National  Gallery  were  too 
busy  ransacking  Italy  for  the  treasures  of 
her    Quattrocento     to    take    much     account    of 

!°5 


THE    NATIONAL    GALLERY 

contemporary  achievements  across  the  Channel. 
The  record  of  French  art,  therefore,  at  Trafalgar 
Square  stops  short  just  at  the  commencement 
of  its  most  brilliant  chapter.  In  the  splendid 
Poussins  and  Claudes  there  are  the  foundations 
of  what  might  become  an  excellent  collection 
of  French  pictures,  but  the  superstructure  still 
remains  to  be  added. 

When  the  Poussins  and  Claude  inaugurated 
the  renaissance  of  French  painting,  the  classical 
ideal  was  supreme  in  art  as  in  literature.  Nicholas 
Poussin  "  studied  the  ancients  so  much,"  says 
Sir  Joshua  Reynolds  "  that  he  acquired  a  habit 
of  thinking  in  their  way,  and  seemed  to  know 
perfectly  the  actions  and  gestures  they  would 
use  on  every  occasion."  In  his  pictures  of 
bacchanalian  revels  (42,  62)  he  has  captured 
something  of  the  rhythmic  flowing  motion  and 
vital  gaiety  of  the  Greek  bas-relief.  He  has 
succeeded  in  the  rare  achievement  of  recon- 
structing the  antique  without  falling  into  the 
academic.  Here  at  last  is  a  classicism  which, 
even  if  we  cannot  quite  believe  in  it,  warms  and 
exhilarates  instead  of  chilling  us. 

It  is  a  little  difficult  for  us  to  understand  the 
immense    prestige    which    the    name    of  Claude 

106 


THE   FRENCH    SCHOOL 

Lorraine    possessed    for  a  period   of  nearly    two 
hundred  years.  He  was  judged  to  be  as  supreme 
in  the  painting  of  landscape  as   Raphael  in  the 
painting  of   the   human  form.  Goethe   eulogised 
him   as   at   once    the    slave   and    the    master   of 
nature.    Constable,    writing    from   the    house    of 
Sir  George  Beaumont  where  he  had  Rembrandt, 
Rubens   and    Canaletto   to  look    at,   said:    "The 
Claudes,   the    Claudes    are    all,    all,   I   can   think 
of  here."   Sir   George's   Claudes  now  hang  with 
others   in  the  National  Gallery  and  if  they  have 
lost  their  magnetic  power  over  us  we  can  never- 
theless feel  the  charm  of  these  visionary  palaces, 
washed  by  visionary  seas,  these  avenues  of  waters 
with    their    light-tipped    waves,    and    this    calm 
golden  heaven,  in  which,  as  Ruskin  said,  he  was 
the  first  to  set  the  sun. 

It  was  an  immense  audacity  of  Turner  to 
challenge  comparison  with  the  painter  who  was 
considered  at  that  time  to  be  the  supreme 
sovereign  in  the  art  of  landscape.  This  he  did 
in  the  most  emphatic  manner,  as  every  visitor  to 
the  National  Gallery  knows  who  has  seen  his 
Dido  building  Carthage  and  Sun  rising  in  a  Mist, 
hanging  side  by  side  with  Claude's  Embarkation 
oj    the    Qveev    of  Sheba    and    Isaac  and    Rebecca. 

107 


THE    NATIONAL    GALLERY 

In  bequeathing  this  and  another  picture  to  the 
trustees  of  the  Gallery  he  made  the  following 
remarkable  stipulation  : — "  I  direct  that  the  said 
pictures  or  paintings  shall  be  hung,  kept  and 
placed,  that  is  to  say,  always  between  the  two 
pictures  painted  by  Claude,  the  Seaport  and 
Mill."  In  imposing  this  condition  Turner  was 
unjust  to  himself.  If  the  whole  body  of  his  work 
be  compared  with  Claude's  achievement,  the 
superiority  of  Turner's  genius  is  never  for  an 
instant  in  doubt,  but  if  the  comparison  be  con- 
fined to  these  two  pictures  it  is  by  no  means 
certain  that  the  verdict  is  in  his  favour.  The 
question  is  summed  up  concisely  by  P.  G. 
Hamerton.  "  Claude's  field  was  a  narrow  one. 
Though  he  lived  long  and  covered  many 
canvases,  he  seems  to  have  had  but  few  artistic 
ideas,  and  the  very  paucity  of  these  enabled  him 
to  realise  them  with  all  the  greater  perfection. 
Turner  was  vast  in  range  and  very  unequal ; 
Claude,  narrow  in  range,  but  remarkably  regular 
in  the  degree  of  his  technical  success.  Now,  what 
Turner  did  was  this  :  he,  a  man  of  wide  range, 
attempted  to  contend  with  a  man  of  narrow 
range,  on  one  of  the  narrow  man's  own  private 
specialities.  He  invited  a  comparison  between  his 

108 


THE    FRENCH    SCHOOL 

seaport  with  classical  architecture  called  Dido 
building  Carthage,  and  Claude's  seaport  with 
classical  architecture  known  as  the  Embarkation 
of  the  Queen  of  Sheba.  The  mistake  of  inviting 
such  a  comparison  is  visible  almost  at  the  first 
glance.  The  Claude  is  light,  fresh,  full  of  atmos- 
phere, and  that  lively,  inspiriting  feeling  which 
takes  possession  of  us  when  a  pleasant  breeze 
and  transparent  waves  invite  us  to  sail  out  upon 
the  sea ;  the  Turner  is  heavy,  and  though,  in 
a  certain  sense,  imposing  and  magnificent,  is 
entirely  wanting  in  freshness." 

The  very  antithesis  of  Claude's  suave  idealism 
is  a  realistic  little  portrait  group  by  his  contem- 
porary Lenain,  or  perhaps  more  coi-rectly  by  the 
brothers  Lenain  (1425).  The  peasant  woman  and 
her  five  children  are  all  submitting  with  painful 
gravity  to  the  operation  of  having  their  likenesses 
taken,  and  the  result  is  a  piece  of  painting  of 
charming  freshness  and  the  utmost  intensity  of 
feeling.  Surely  no  painter  has  ever  surpassed  in 
intimate  realisation  of  child  character  the  portrait 
of  the  timid,  wistful-looking  boy  holding  the 
pitcher.  In  the  same  vein  of  realism,  which  runs 
through  the  whole  course  of  French  painting  side 
by   side  with  the  traditions  of  academic  correc  t 

109 


THE   NATIONAL    GALLERY 

ness  and  courtly  grace,  is  painted  Chardin's 
superb  Study  of  Still  Life  (1258).  Just  a  broken 
loaf  of  bread,  a  black  bottle  and  a  small  tumbler 
half  filled  with  wine,  spread  out  on  a  piece  of  old 
newspaper,  but  seen  with  what  intensity  of  vision 
and  painted  with  what  mastery  of  touch.  "  Oh  ! 
it  is  not  colour  alone  that  you  mix,"  wrote 
Diderot  to  Chardin,  "it  is  the  very  substance  of 
the  objects  ;  it  is  light  and  air  that  you  render." 
It  would  seem  that  these  humble  and  familiar 
objects  had  been  transformed  by  the  artist's 
imagination,  so  that  what  we  see  is  no  longer  the 
mere  remnant  of  a  meal,  but  the  eternal  symbols 
of  meat  and  drink — bread  of  bread  and  very  wine 
of  very  wine ! 

But  we  look  in  vain  for  any  glimpse  of  that 
gay  and  glowing  aspect  of  eighteenth-century 
France  which  Chardin  ignored — the  jetes  galantcs, 
the  beds  masques,  the  pierrots  and  pierrettes,  the 
intimacies  of  the  boudoir,  the  affectations  of 
courtly  pastoralism.  Watteau  is  absent,  though 
his  pupil  Boucher  shows  one  picture;  absent 
too  are  Fragonard,  Perroneau,  Nattier,  and  Lar- 
gillicre.  Greuze,  who  held  a  middle  course 
between  the  artificial  graces  of  fashionable  life 
and    the    plain    simplicity    of    the    life    of    the 

no 


THE   FRENCH    SCHOOL 

people,  is  here  with  four  typical  heads  of  girls, 
among  them  the  well-known  Girl  with  an 
Apple  (1020).  "Courage,  my  good  Greuze," 
was  Diderot's  counsel  ;  "introduce  morality  into 
painting."  Unfortunately  he  introduced  senti- 
mentality instead,  and  that  peculiar  "  horizontal 
swimming  motion  of  the  eyes  like  a  spirit 
level." 

But  it  is  when  we  come  to  more  modern  times 
that  the  gaps  become  more  numerous  and  more 
apparent.  It  is  impossible  to  attempt  to  form 
from  the  miscellaneous  little  collection  of  modern 
French  pictures  even  a  fragmentary  idea  of  the 
variety  and  fulness  of  French  painting  in  the 
nineteenth  century.  Round  the  walls  of  one  of 
the  rooms  of  the  Gallery  we  read  the  inscription  : 
"  The  works  of  those  who  have  stood  the  test  of 
ages  have  a  claim  to  that  respect  and  veneration 
to  which  no  modern  can  pretend."  Agreed :  but 
if  the  moderns  may  not  claim  to  be  respected  they 
have  surely  a  claim  to  be  seen.  Taking  the  names 
of  the  chief  "  modern  "  French  painters  who  were 
born  before  the  Gallery  came  into  existence,  how 
do  we  find  them  represented  ?  David  and  Ingres, 
the  chief  exponents  of  the  classical  school  which 
arose    after    the     Revolution,    have    one    picture 

in 


THE   NATIONAL    GALLERY 

apiece — that  of  David  not  half  completed  and 
that  of  Ingres  an  unworthy  sketch  ascribed  to 
him  with  a  query.  Corot,  thanks  to  a  bequest;, 
comes  off  fairly  handsomely  with  seven  works  in 
his  later  manner.  Of  the  Romantics,  Gericault  is 
absent  altogether.  Delacroix  is  to  be  judged  by 
one  picture  which  cannot  be  said  to  do  him 
justice.  Of  the  Barbizon  school,  three  examples  of 
Diaz  have  been  presented,  five  of  Daubigny,  and 
one  insignificant  example  of  Rousseau ;  Troyon, 
Jacques  and  Dupre  have  as  yet  no  place.  To 
Millet  and  Courbet  are  allotted  one  small  picture 
each.  Fromentin,  Monticelli,  Puvis  de  Chavannes 
are  among  the  absentees.  Manet,  born  in  1833, 
and  Degas,  his  junior  by  a  year,  may  be  con- 
sidered to  be  too  modern  to  claim  recognition, 
but  both  are  already  classics  and  Manet  some 
years  ago  received  the  sanction  of  a  place  in  the 
Louvre.  The  dust  of  controversy  still  hangs 
perhaps  over  the  names  of  the  Impressionists, 
but  the  works  of  Monet,  Sisley  and  Renoir,  not 
to  mention  others,  will  some  day  have  to  be 
acquired  if  the  Gallery  is  to  reflect  at  all 
adequately  the  development  of  French  art  in  the 
nineteenth  century.  However,  a  beginning  has 
been  made,  and  for  this  we  must  be  grateful. 

112 


c 


y 
z 


s. 


<  i- 


THE    FRENCH   SCHOOL 

The  bequest  of  the  late  Mr  George  Salting 
forms  the  chief  contribution  to  this  miscellaneous 
little  group  of  modern  French  paintings,  and 
includes  five  examples  of  Corot  and  two  of  Diaz. 
The  Bent  Tree  (2625)  and  Wood  Gatherers  (2627) 
admirably  illustrate  Corot's  fondness  for  twilight 
effects.  "  Bien !  Bien !  twilight  commences,"  so 
he  described  in  a  letter  the  close  of  a  painter's 
day.  "  There  is  now  in  the  sky  only  that  soft 
vaporous  colour  of  pale  citron.  One  is  losing 
sight  of  everything,  but  one  still  feels  that  every- 
thing is  there.  The  birds,  those  voices  of  the 
flowers,  say  their  evening  prayer,  the  dew 
scatters  pearls  upon  the  grass,  the  nymphs  fly, 
everything  is  again  darkened."  These  two 
pictures  with  their  silvery-grey  trees  and  pale 
opal-flushed  skies  exquisitely  suggest  the  hush 
and  softness  of  that  hour  when  the  moths  and 
the  stars  begin  to  appear.  In  the  orange  cap  of 
the  woman  in  The  Bent  Tree  the  painter  has 
added  that  spot  of  warm  colour  which  he  usually 
made  use  of  to  give  their  full  values  to  the  per- 
vading tones  of  grey  and  olive. 

In  Sunny  Days  in  the  Forest  (2058)  and  The 
Storm  (2682)  Diaz  shows  his  preference  for  the 
less  ambiguous  hours  of  clear  light  or  emphatic 

H  113 


THE   NATIONAL   GALLERY 

gloom.  His  trees  are  of  a  robuster  build  than 
Corot's  quivering  ghostly  forms,  that  seem  always 
ready  to  dissolve  into  the  encroaching  mist — 
trees  firmly  set  upon  widespreading  roots,  with 
trunks  of  thick  girth  that  have  a  history  of  years 
of  growth  and  struggle.  "  Have  you  seen  my  last 
stem  ?  "  he  was  wont  to  say  to  his  visitors,  and 
it  was  the  permanent  architectural  structure  of 
the  tree  that  seemed  to  interest  him  more  than 
its  changing  vesture  of  foliage.  The,  Storm  is  a 
vigorous  piece  of  painting  representing  a  wild 
common  with  a  few  stunted  wind-swept  trees 
beneath  a  heavy  sky  of  inky  clouds  and  broken 
lights — you  can  almost  hear  the  rush  of  wind  and 
the  first  mutter  of  the  thunder. 

The  National  Art  Collections  Fund  has  pre- 
sented a  delightful  little  work  by  Boudin,  the 
precursor  of  the  Impressionists,  The  Harbour  at 
Trouville  (2078),  a  pool  of  clear  blue  water  en- 
closed by  two  wooden  jetties.  The  painting  is 
clean  and  crisp,  and  the  whole  picture  sparkles 
with  a  radiant  light  and  gives  the  very  feel  of 
the  cool,  fresh  sea  air. 

Courbet's  seashore,  with  its  pleasant  harmony 
of  cool  colour,  Daubigny's  evening  scene,  with 
the  sun   setting  behind  willows,  Fantin-Latour's 

114 


THE    FRENCH   SCHOOL 

exquisite  studies  of  flowers  and  his  sober  portrait 
of  Mr  and  Mrs  Edwardes,  present  a  few  more 
aspects  of  the  French  school  of  the  nineteenth 
century. 


"5 


VIII 

THE    BRITISH    SCHOOL 


It  has  not  infrequently  been  assumed   that  the 
English  school  of  painting  had  no  infancy,  but 
sprang  full-grown  into  life,  marked  by  a  strong 
national  genius,  on  the  coming  of  the  Hanover- 
ians.  Some  colour  is  lent  to  this  view   by  the 
general  composition  of  the  British  rooms  at  the 
National  Gallery,  which  only  include  two  works 
by  English  painters   previous  to  the  eighteenth 
century:   a  portrait  by  John  Bettes  dated  1545 
and  another  by  William  Dobson,  whom  Charles  I. 
called    his    "English    Tintoret."    Certainly    the 
native  school,  dwarfed  by  foreign  influence  at  the 
Renaissance  and  uninspired  by  the  examples  of 
Spain  and   Holland  in  the  seventeenth  century, 
received     little     encouragement     from     English 
patrons  of  art.    The   court  from    Henry  VII.   to 
Charles     II.     consistently    patronised    artists    of 
foreign     birth — Holbein,     Rubens,     Van     Dyck, 
Lely,  Kneller.  But  at  the  same  time  there  was 

116 


THE    BRITISH    SCHOOL 

a  by  no  means  contemptible  display  of  native 
talent,  including  among  others  the  names  of 
Nicholas  Hilliard  and  Isaac  Oliver,  the  latter 
of  whom  painted  portraits  of  Mary  Stuart 
and  Elizabeth,  George  Jameson,  whom  Horace 
Walpole  styled  the  "Scottish  Van  Dyck,"  and 
Robert  Walker,  painter  to  Oliver  Cromwell. 

In  the  National  Gallery,  which  aims  at  being 
a  historical  but  not  an  antiquarian  collection, 
the  English  school  very  properly  begins  with 
William  Hogarth.  Borrowing  nothing  from  foreign 
traditions,  Hogarth  was  English  in  his  strength 
and  in  his  weaknesses.  In  the  portrait  that  he 
painted  of  himself  we  can  read  an  epitome  of  the 
English  character — practical,  self-reliant,  clear- 
sighted, kindly  and  just.  His  love  of  animals 
a  typically  English  trait,  is  seen  in  the  promin- 
ence that  he  gives  in  the  picture  to  his  dog 
"Trump."  His  view  of  the  intimate  connection 
of  painting  with  literature  and  morals,  another 
equally  national  characteristic,  is  emphasised  by 
the  three  volumes  which  he  has  placed  at  the 
foot  of  the  portrait,  inscribed  with  the  names 
of  Shakespeare,  Milton  and  Swift. 

Lacking   the    all-pardoning   comprehension    of 
Shakespeare  and  the  sublimity  of  Milton,  Hogarth 

117 


THE   NATIONAL    GALLERY 

shows  a  closer  affinity  with  the  caustic  temper 
of  the  Dean  of  St  Patrick's.  It  has  been  urged 
against  him  that  he  was  a  satirist  rather  than 
an  artist.  Certainly  no  satire  ever  penned  was 
more  incisive  and  relentless  than  his  Marriage  a  la 
Mode  (11 3-1 1  8).  Hogarth  sold  this  famous  series  of 
six  pictures  by  auction  in  1750.,  when  they  were 
knocked  down  to  the  only  bidder  for  £126 — the 
frames  alone  had  cost  him  £24  !  Fifty  years  later 
Mr  Angerstein  bought  them  for  £1381.  The 
series  is  simply  a  comedy,  or  rather  a  tragedy, 
of  manners  in  six  acts.  In  the  first  the  ambitious 
city  merchant  is  seen  purchasing  in  hard  cash 
a  title  for  his  daughter  and  the  prestige  of  an 
alliance  with  the  house  of  the  blue-blooded, 
gouty  earl.  Meanwhile  the  foppish  young  lord 
turns  his  back  upon  his  future  bride  and  takes 
snuff  with  an  ostentatious  affectation  of  indif- 
ference. The  merchant's  daughter  with  equal 
listlessness  divides  her  attention  between  twid- 
dling her  wedding  ring  on  her  handkerchief  and 
listening  to  the  amusing  asides  of  the  amiable 
lawyer.  The  next  scene  presents  us  with  a 
glimpse  of  the  married  life  begun  under  such 
unpromising  auspices — the  family  breakfast  on 
a    morning   following   a    night  which   the   earl's 

n8 


THE    BRITISH    SCHOOL 

son  has  spent  in  debauchery  and  his  wife  in 
gambling,  the  steward  retiring  from  the  scene 
in  disgust  with  a  sheaf  of  unpaid  bills  in  his 
hand.  The  husband  is  then  seen  visiting  a  quack 
doctor  and  a  procuress,  while  the  countess  amuses 
herself  in  her  dressing-room  with  the  gay  lawyer, 
now  on  terms  of  considerable  intimacy,  and  a 
circle  of  opera-singers,  musicians  and  fashionable 
acquaintances.  Then  follow  the  earl's  discovery 
of  his  wife's  infidelity  and  his  fatal  duel  with 
the  villain  of  the  piece,  the  rascally  lawyer.  In 
the  last  scene  the  widowed  countess  is  back  in 
her  father's  house  in  the  city.  She  has  taken 
poison  after  hearing  of  the  execution  of  her  lover. 
Meanwhile  the  merchant  with  his  habitual 
prudence  is  careful  to  remove  the  wedding  ring 
from  her  finger.  Thus  we  are  left  to  reflect  upon 
the  awful  consequences  of  a  mariage  de  convenance ! 
"  Other  pictures  we  look  at, — his  we  read," 
said  Charles  Lamb  of  Hogarth's  work,  a  criticism 
quite  literally  true  of  this  series.  In  every  picture 
the  spectator  is  invited  to  scrutinise  written  or 
printed  inscriptions  of  one  kind  or  another,  which 
help  to  tell  the  story — the  earl's  pedigree,  the 
marriage  contract  and  the  mortgage  deeds  in 
the  first  scene,  the  bills  and  receipt  and  "  Hoyle 

119 


THE    NATIONAL   GALLERY 

on  Whist"  in  the  second,  the  ticket  for  the 
masquerade  on  the  evening  of  the  duel,  the 
broadsheet  giving  "Counsellor  Silvertongue's 
last  dying  speech."  The  painter  crosses  the  t's 
and  dots  the  i's  of  his  story,  anxious  lest  you 
should  miss  a  single  one  of  the  details  by  which 
he  forces  home  his  moral.  It  is  his  insistence 
upon  a  moral  that  distinguishes  him  from  his 
predecessors  of  the  Dutch  school  of  genre  to 
which  his  work  is  naturally  allied.  Their  attitude 
was  one  of  a  serene  and  comfortable  acceptance 
of  life,  a  sensuous  delight  in  the  colours  and 
textures  and  surfaces  of  things,  which  rendered 
them  more  attentive  to  the  pictorial  rather  than 
the  emotional  qualities  of  the  human  figures  they 
chose  to  place  in  the  pattern  of  their  pictures. 
But  Hogarth  was  more  interested  in  men  and 
women  than  in  paint,  and  what  interested  him 
most  in  men  and  women  was  character  and  morals. 
He  aimed  at  doing  in  painting  what  Richardson 
and  Smollett  were  doing  in  literature.  "  I  have 
endeavoured  to  treat  my  subject  as  a  dramatic 
writer,"  he  said.  "  My  picture  is  my  stage,  my 
men  and  woemn  my  players,  who  by  means  of 
certain  actions  and  gestures  are  to  exhibit  a 
dumb  show." 

120 


•_ 


Lord  Heathfield 

Reynolds 


THE    BRITISH    SCHOOL 

And  how  vital,  significant  and  instinct  with 
intelligence  these  gestures  are !  Could  bodily 
attitude  be  more  intimately  expressive  of  char- 
acter than  in  the  pompous  pose  of  the  gout- 
ridden  peer,  acerb  and  splenetic,  in  the  lounging, 
reckless  indifference  of  the  young  lord  in  the 
breakfast  scene,  in  the  stolid  docility  of  the 
young  girl  at  the  quack  doctor's  ?  And  was  the 
moment  of  death  ever  realised  with  such  intensity 
as  in  the  husband's  dying  swoon  after  the  duel  ? 
There  is  never  anything  artificial  in  Hogarth's 
figures,  no  hint  of  the  model — one  and  all  they  are 
observed  from  life  and  bear  the  authentic  stamp 
of  truth.  In  scarcely  a  less  degree  than  Velazquez, 
Hogarth  possesses  that  special  faculty  of  genius 
which  consists  in  giving  to  the  sitter  an  air 
of  being  taken  by  the  painter  unawares  and 
observed  in  the  natural  performance  of  a  char- 
acteristic act. 

If  there  were  any  danger  of  losing  sight  of 
the  painter  in  the  moralist  we  have  only  to  look 
for  a  moment  at  the  masterly  portraits  of  his 
servants  (1874)  and  The  Shrimp  Girl  (11 62)  to  be 
assured  that  Hogarth  had  nothing  to  learn  from 
any  master  of  his  own  day  about  the  handling 
of  paint.  Of  the  latter  picture  Sir  Claude  Phillips 

121 


THE   NATIONAL   GALLERY 

has  said,  "This  is  a  veritable  study  of  nature, 
pris  sur  le  vif,  an  instantaneous  impression  of 
humanity,  in  a  fleeting  moment  of  complete 
physical  activity,  which  has  never  been  surpassed, 
even  by  the  most  magically  dexterous  of  the 
higher  Impressionists  of  to-day ;  and  over  and 
above  all  this,  it  has  a  salt  savour  of  the  sea, 
a  true  national  flavour  which  renders  it  in  its 
way  unique." 

From  Hogarth,  who  laughed  before  Raphael, 
and  said  of  himself  that  "  he  was  so  profane  as 
to  admire  Nature  before  Art"  to  Sir  Joshua 
Reynolds  with  his  care  for  the  grand  style  and 
his  insistent  advice  "  Study  the  old  masters,"  we 
seem  to  pass  from  the  real  to  the  ideal.  Hogarth 
demanded  the  truth,  the  whole  truth  and  nothing 
but  the  truth— except  perhaps  occasionally  a 
little  manipulation  of  fact  in  the  interest  of  pub- 
lic morals ;  for  the  industrious  apprentice  does 
not  always  succeed  in  marrying  his  master's 
beautiful  daughter  and  becoming  Lord  Mayor 
of  London,  nor  do  all  manages  de  convenance 
invariably  end  in  disaster.  Reynolds,  however, 
could  be  guilty  of  a  little  gentle  falsehood, 
"just  enough  to  make  all  men  noble,  all  women 
beautiful."    But    it   was    his   good    fortune    that 

122 


THE    BRITISH    SCHOOL 

almost  all  his  women  were  beautiful  to  begin 
with,  and  most  of  his  men  noble — noble,  that  is 
to  say,  with  that  peculiarly  eighteenth-century 
stamp  of  nobility  which  speaks  the  good  breeding 
of  the  body  rather  than  of  the  soul. 

It  is  no  disparagement  of  Reynolds'  genius  to 
say  that  he  was  fortunate  in  being  born  in  the 
England  of  the  eighteenth  century.  Historians 
tell  us  that  the  fortunes  of  the  landed  gentry 
at  that  time  were  established  upon  the  humble 
turnip,  the  introduction  of  which,  by  making 
agriculture  for  the  first  time  a  highly  profitable 
industry,  doubled  the  landlord's  rent  roll.  The 
stately  Georgian  homes  of  England — seats  would 
be  the  more  fitting  term — presiding  over  the 
tamed  grandeur  of  their  landscape  gardens,  rose 
in  every  county.  A  stream  of  pictures  and  works 
of  art  began  to  flow  into  them  from  Holland  and 
Italy.  They  formed  a  fitting  setting  for  that 
society  which  has  so  deeply  imprinted  its 
characteristics  upon  English  art  and  literature, 
a  society  founded  upon  a  decent  affluence, 
possessing  elevated  notions  of  style  and  taste, 
inheriting  healthy  traditions  of  sport  and  open- 
air  life,  serene,  self-confident,  decorous,  robust. 
For  the   class  that  shared  this  happy  existence 

123 


THE   NATIONAL   GALLERY 

one  thing  more  was  needful  to  complete  its 
felicity — that  it  should  have  its  portrait  painted. 
And  it  is  difficult  to  say  which  was  the  more 
fortunate — the  gentry  in  being  able  to  command 
the  brush  of  Reynolds,  or  Reynolds  himself  in 
finding  at  his  hand  the  precise  material  most  apt 
for  the  expression  of  his  own  individual  genius. 

For  Reynolds'  genius  was  not  strong  enough 
to  sustain  the  eagle-pinioned  flights  of  the 
imagination.  He  could  scarcely  have  breathed 
with  comfort  in  a  more  rarefied  atmosphere  than 
that  of  the  eighteenth  century.  Even  when  his 
gaze  was  most  intently  fixed  upon  the  ideal,  he 
needed  to  feel  the  stable  and  familiar  earth 
beneath  his  feet.  For  what  was  extreme  and  in- 
calculable in  human  nature  he  had  no  sympathy — 
the  fleshly  zest  and  energy  of  Rubens  was  as  much 
outside  the  compass  of  his  art  as  the  spiritual  in- 
tensity of  Rembrandt.  But  in  the  lords  and  ladies, 
the  squires  and  squiresses,  who  flocked  to  his 
studio  to  have  their  portraits  taken  at  twenty-five 
guineas  a  head,  he  found  just  that  middle  term 
of  humanity,  which  was  so  exactly  suited  to  his 
powers  of  interpretation,  a  type  which  combined 
bodily  dignity  and  grace  with  a  certain  limitation, 
it  would  be  unfair  to  call  it  vulgarity,  of  mind. 

124 


THE   BRITISH    SCHOOL 

As  a  perfect  instance  of  Sir  Joshua's  way  of 
expressing  the  particular  facts  of  life  in  the 
general  terms  of  art,  take  The  Graces  decorating 
a  Statue  oj  Hymen  (79).  The  circumstances  that 
each  of  the  three  beautiful  daughters  of  Sir 
William  Montgomery  did  exceedingly  well  for 
herself  in  that  marriage  market  of  the  period 
which  was  conducted  on  such  sound  business 
principles  is  here  clothed  with  the  graceful 
sentiment  of  a  classical  idyll.  The  note  of  reality 
is  deftly  transposed  into  the  key  of  the  ideal. 
The  British  landscape  garden  is  made  for  the 
moment  to  wear  the  aspect  of  pastoral  Greece. 
This  sacrifice  of  local  and  particular  truth  in  the 
effort  to  secure  a  possibly  artificial  dignity 
offended  the  honest  soul  of  James  Smetham. 
"Oh,  that  the  three  celebrated  beauties  had 
been  winding  silk,"  he  exclaimed,  "  or  shooting 
at  targets,  or  even  occupied,  as  it  is  said  one 
fine  lady  who  sat  to  Reynolds,  was  'eating  beef- 
steaks'!" Hut  Reynolds  always  eliminated  the 
beefsteak. 

"  I  will  go  down  to  posterity  on  the  hem  of  your 
ladyship's  garment,"  said  the  courtly  Sir  Joshua,  as 
he  signed  his  name  at  the  bottom  of  the  dress  in 
the  charming  portrait  of  Lady  Cockburn  and  her 

125 


THE   NATIONAL    GALLERY 

children.  Their  ladyships  have  certainly  come 
down  to  posterity  on  the  canvases  of  Sir  Joshua. 
Most  of  them  still  hang  on  the  walls  of  the  rooms 
of  their  ancestral  seats,  but  in  addition  to  the 
Three  Graces  and  Lady  Cockburn  (2077)  the  Na- 
tional Gallery  possesses  those  two  incomparable 
types  of  the  eighteenth-century  aristocracy,  Anne, 
Countess  Albemarle  (1259),  with  her  expression  of 
command  and  air  as  of  one  whose  prestige 
has  never  been  questioned,  and  Mrs  Musters, 
Portrait  of  a  Lady  (891),  serene  and  disdainful 
in  the  cold  beauty  of  her  classic  profile. 

Of  his  portraits  of  men,  those  of  Lord  Heath- 
jield  (111)  and  Dr  Johnson  (887)  are  especially 
characteristic  of  that  quiet  nobility  with  which 
Reynolds  invested  his  sitters.  The  bluff  old  soldier 
of  the  right  bull-dog  breed  who  had  held  Gibraltar 
for  England  against  all  comers  stands  up  squarely 
against  a  sky  dark  with  battle  smoke,  tapping 
the  key  of  the  fortress  on  his  fingers,  a  very 
personification  of  the  defiant  boast  "  What  we 
have  we  hold ! "  The  portrait  of  Dr  Johnson 
is  a  psychological  study  in  paint.  The  mind 
appears  to  be  concentrated  in  argument,  as 
though  the  great  lexicographer  were  bearing 
down    upon    some    luckless    antagonist    with    a 

126 


THE   BRITISH    SCHOOL 

"Now,  sir,  what's  your  drift?"    or,  "Nay,  sir, 
this  is  paltry." 

The    fact   that    the    art  of    Reynolds   was    ex- 
clusively, and  that  of  Gainsborough  primarily,  an 
art  of  portraiture  has  tended  to  keep  the  bulk 
of  their  work    in  the  hands  of  private    owners. 
Neither  of  them  are  seen  quite  at  their  best  at 
Trafalgar    Square.    We    miss    the    Nelly    O'Brien 
of  Sir  Joshua  and  the  Blue  Boy  of  his  rival.  But 
we  are  well  content  to  measure  Gainsborough's 
genius    by    his   achievement   in    the    portrait    of 
Mrs  Siddons  (683).   In  his  portrait  of  the  actress 
as  the  Tragic  Muse,  painted   in  the  same  year, 
Reynolds  forced  the  note  of  tragedy  by  imposing 
upon  her  a  tremendous  dramatic  gesture  ;  Gains- 
borough paints  her  in  the  easy  pose  of  a  morning 
call  and  lets  the  tragedian  in  her  speak  simply 
by  her  presence.  Severely  majestic,  her  expression 
gives  credence  to  the  reported  assertion  of  one 
of  her  admirers — "  One  would  as  soon  think  of 
making  love  to  the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury." 
Yet   it  is    possible  to    discriminate   between  the 
dignity  of   Gainsborough  and  that  of   Reynolds. 
The  dignity  of   Gainsborough's  sitters   seems   to 
partake  of  a    more  spiritual    quality,  expressing 
not  so  much  the  consciousness  of  outward  rank 

127 


THE   NATIONAL   GALLERY 

as  the  secure  possession  of  the  inward  soul. 
Moreover  usually,  as  in  this  portrait,  it  is  misted 
over  with  a  breath  of  dreamy  melancholy. 
Gainsborough,  who  was  never  so  much  at  his  ease 
in  the  world  as  Reynolds,  seems  to  have  been 
sensitive  to  a  note  of  sadness  and  regret  in 
human  nature  which  his  more  successful  rival 
never  overheard,  and  doubtless  he  lent  to  his 
sitters,  whether  they  possessed  it  or  not,  some- 
thing of  the  colour  of  his  own  temperament.  We 
observe  it  even  in  the  wistful  reticent  face  of 
the  older  child  in  The  Painter  s  Daughters  (1811), 
and  still  more  markedly  in  his  portrait  of  the 
same  daughter  painted  many  years  later,  Miss 
Gainsborough  (1482). 

The  portrait  of  Mrs  Siddons  illustrates  in 
a  very  individual  manner  the  technical  as  well 
as  the  emotional  qualities  of  the  painter.  Here 
again  the  contrast  with  Reynolds  is  obvious.  In 
place  of  the  Venetian  splendour  and  golden  glow 
of  Reynolds  we  have  the  greenish  pallor  of  the 
cold  keys  in  which  Gainsborough  delighted  to 
compose.  With  this  picture  before  us  we  are 
willing  for  once  to  go  the  whole  length  of 
Ruskin's  superlative  and  declare  Gainsborough 
the  finest  colourist  since  Rubens.   The  technique 

128 


Mrs.   Siodons 

t  "rahisborottsh 


Mrs.   Sidhons 
Lawrence 


THE    BRITISH   SCHOOL 

is  curiously  modern,  almost  impressionist,  in 
appearance.  The  broad  decorative  treatment 
of  the  striped  silk  dress ;  the  delicacy  of  its 
texture ;  the  refinement  of  the  drawing ;  the 
ease  and  lightness  of  the  handling  which  give 
an  effect  of  happy  spontaneity ;  these  qualities 
lend  the  picture  a  distinction  and  charm  unsur- 
passed by  any  portrait  of  the  English  school. 
Possibly  the  impression  of  spontaneity  is  deceptive, 
for  that  the  painter  had  trouble  with  the  face 
we  know  from  his  irritable  exclamation,  "  Damn 
it,  madam,  there  is  no  end  to  your  nose!"  How 
far  Gainsborough  could  fall  below  his  own  level 
we  are  painfully  aware  when  we  turn  from  this 
brilliant  piece  of  painting  to  the  vapid  and 
uninspired  Musidora  bathing  her  Feet  (308). 

To  their  successors,  Romney,  Raeburn,  Opie, 
Hoppner,  Lawrence,  the  two  masters  of  English 
portraiture  bequeathed  their  tradition  of  style 
but  not  their  genius.  Romney's  portraits  of  Mrs 
Mark  Currie  (1651)  and  The  Parson's  Daughter 
(1068)  reveal  his  skill  in  a  certain  swift  abridg- 
ment of  feminine  charm.  The  powdery  cloud 
of  hair,  the  soft  complexion,  the  childlike 
archness  of  expression,  the  free  flimsy  draperies, 
all  the  obvious  and  superficial  graces  of  woman, 
I  129 


THE    NATIONAL   GALLERY 

he  recorded  with  an  easy,  agreeable  touch, 
although  at  times  showing  cheap  and  thin 
in  comparison  with  Sir  Joshua's.  But  he  was 
unable  to  penetrate  beneath  the  surface. 
Emotional  rather  than  intellectual  in  his  outlook, 
he  did  not  give  his  sitters  character  and  soul ; 
sometimes,  as  in  the  sad  case  of  Mrs  Currie,  not 
even  bones.  For  a  great  part  of  his  life  he  was, 
like  Nelson,  under  the  spell  of  that  professional 
charmer  Emma  Lyon,  alias  Lady  Hamilton,  "  the 
divine  lady,"  as  he  called  her,  "  I  cannot  give 
her  any  other  epithet,  for  I  think  her  superior 
to  all  womankind."  Here  we  see  her  as  a 
bacchante  in  a  "  vivid  sketch,  large,  streaky, 
splashy — a  successful  excited  beginning — a  rosy- 
cheeked  girl,  with  golden-brown  hair,  the  head 
inclined  on  the  right  shoulder,  the  moistened 
teeth  white  and  a-gleam  between  red  lips — 
a  canvas  of  cream  and  rose  colour"  (31 2).1 

Lawrence's  study  of  Mrs  Siddons  contrasts 
significantly  with  Gainsborough's  portrait.  The 
sentiment  of  the  earlier  picture  is  here  melted 
into  sentimentality.  Her  melancholy  has  become 
more  tearful,  her  austere  beauty  mere  prettiness. 
Lawrence  was  essentially  the  painter  of  the 
1  F.  Wedmore. 
130 


THE    BRITISH    SCHOOL 

Byronic  era.  His  women  are  ardent,  melting, 
romantic — often  in  spite  of  themselves.  Even 
that  devout  young  Methodist,  Miss  Caroline  Fry, 
had  to  submit  to  being  gypsified.  The  young 
painter  was  the  prodigy  of  the  art  world  of  his 
age.  Lawrence's  father  declined  the  Duke  of 
Devonshire's  offer  to  send  him  to  Rome,  affirming 
that  "  his  son's  talent  required  no  cultivation." 
"  His  studio  before  he  was  twelve  years  old  was," 
we  are  told,  "  the  favourite  resort  of  the  beauty 
and  fashion  and  taste  of  Bath :  young  ladies 
loved  to  sit  and  converse  with  the  handsome 
prodigy,  men  of  taste  and  vertu  purchased  his 
crayon  heads,  which  he  drew  in  vast  numbers, 
and  carried  them  far  and  near,  even  into  foreign 
lands,  to  show  as  the  work  of  the  boy-artist  of 
Britain."  Even  his  mature  work  in  its  extreme 
facility  and  lack  of  depth  seems  still  to  retain 
a  suggestion  of  the  infant  prodigy.  For  some 
justification  of  his  claim  to  be  "  the  second  Rey- 
nolds" we  must  look  to  his  portraits  of  men.  John 
Julius  Angerstein  (129)  is  a  solid  piece  of  painting 
which  mere  cleverness  alone  could  never  have 
achieved. 

If,    as    Ruskin    said,    the    history    of   English 
landscape  art  begins  with  the  name  of  Richard 

131 


THE   NATIONAL   GALLERY 

Wilson,  the  beginning  was  very  much  of  the 
nature  of  a  false  start,  He  is  not  so  much  the 
forerunner  of  Crome  and  Constable  as  the  pupil 
of  Poussin  and  Salvator.  Judging  him  solely 
by  his  works  we  should  scarcely  recognise  him 
as  an  Englishman.  He  found  himself  when  he 
found  Italy,  but  he  never  found  England  at  all. 
His  idea  of  what  landscape  ought  to  be  is  well 
exemplified  in  his  masterpiece,  The  Destruction 
of  Niobe's  Children  (110),  in  which  Apollo,  riding 
the  storm,  is  seen  shooting  lightnings  at  a  group 
of  cowering  mortals.  The  dignity  of  a  landscape 
was  always  enhanced,  according  to  the  Wilsonian 
formula,  when  it  became  the  scene  of  mythological 
activities  or  classical  reminiscence.  In  treating 
a  simpler  theme,  such  as  The  Villa  of  Maecenas, 
at  Tivoli  (108),  he  aims  at  dignity  by  forcing  a  con- 
trast between  bituminous,  coal-black  shadows  and 
an  exaggerated,  unearthly  light.  His  painting 
is  virile  and  his  colour  frequently  excellent,  but 
it  was  his  misfortune  to  lack  the  simplicity  of 
eye  and  mind  that  is  content  with  nature  as  it 
is.  When  George  III.  gave  him  a  commission 
for  a  picture  of  Kew  Gardens,  he  translated  the 
scene  to  a  Southern  latitude  and  ennobled  it  with 
classical     architecture.     The    king    returned    it 

132 


THE   BRITISH   SCHOOL 

with  the  terse  comment,  "  It  is  not  Kew." 
Opinion  in  general  agreed  with  the  royal  verdict. 
Whatever  else  Wilson's  landscape  might  be,  it 
was  not  England. 

With  Gainsborough  came  the  reaction  against 
the  classical  landscape  ;  in  place  of  gods  and 
heroes,  ruined  temples  and  the  glow  of  Italy, 
merely  girls  with  pigs,  market  carts  jolting  along 
country  lanes,  cattle  drinking  at  streams,  and  the 
cold  grey-greens  of  Suffolk.  The  change  was 
not  merely  in  the  accessories,  but  in  the  whole 
attitude  of  the  painter  to  nature.  Gainsborough 
did  not  seek  to  reconstruct  the  natural  scene 
on  a  more  noble  model ;  he  simply  lay  in  wait, 
as  it  were,  for  the  soul  of  the  landscape.  In 
The  Market  Cart  (80)  we  are  at  the  very  heart 
of  rural  England.  Although  Ruskin  complained 
that  the  foliage  was  put  in  with  meaningless 
touches  which  made  it  impossible  to  label  the 
trees  with  botanical  precision,  there  is  here 
a  convincing  fidelity  to  the  deeper  underlying 
truth  of  landscape.  Still  more  intimate  is  the 
feeling  of  hushed  solemnity  in  The  Watering 
Place  (109).  It  is  painted  in  that  same  minor 
key  in  which  so  many  of  his  portraits  are  pitched. 
Constable    remarked    this    melancholy    mood    of 

133 


THE   NATIONAL   GALLERY 

Gainsborough's  landscapes.  "  On  looking  at 
them/'  he  said,  "  we  find  tears  in  our  eyes,  and 
know  not  what  brings  them."  The  Wood  Scene 
(925),  known  as  Gainsborough's  Forest,  from  the 
title  of  the  engraving,  has  a  more  prosaic 
character.  It  suffers  moreover  from  a  division 
of  interest  between  the  road  and  the  stream, 
the  perspective  of  each  carrying  the  eye  back 
in  separate  directions —  a  loss  of  unity  character- 
istic of  the  English  school,  which  in  its  revolt 
against  the  classical  landscape  tended  to  ignore 
the  amenities  of  composition.  And  the  eye 
searches  in  vain  to  discover  the  realities  which 
correspond  to  the  reflections  in  the  water. 

The  acquisition  of  the  Poringland  OaA-(2674)in 
1911  completed  the  Gallery's  magnificent  group  of 
pictures  by  John  Crome  the  Elder.  He  knew 
trees  as  a  man  knows  the  faces  of  his  friends,  and 
this  kingly  oak,  robust  playfellow  of  the  sun  and 
wind,  has  the  close  individuality  of  a  human 
portrait.  Loving  and  understanding  atmosphere 
and  light  as  well  as  any  of  the  French  Impres- 
sionists, unlike  them  he  never  sacrificed  the 
essential  and  permanent  qualities  of  objects  for 
the  sake  of  capturing  the  fleeting  atmospheric 
conditions  under  which  they  are  seen.     But  he 

134 


THE   BRITISH    SCHOOL 

is  greatest  when  he  surrenders  the  particular 
incidents  of  landscape  to  a  broad  summary  of 
earth  and  sky,  as  in  the  large  Mousehold  Heath 
(689).  Here  there  is  no  subject  but  space,  air 
and  solitude.  Landscape  is  reduced  to  its  two 
elemental  constituents,  earth  and  sky ;  but  what 
absorbing,  almost  dramatic,  interest  arises  from 
this  simple  opposition  of  the  ribbed  and  sweeping 
heath  with  the  vaporous  pearl-pink  cloud  and  the 
soft  depth  of  filmy  blue.  Although  the  scene  is 
precise  in  its  localisation,  it  is  in  a  sense  no  longer 
just  Norfolk,  but  a  broad  presentment  of  that 
primeval  earth  and  heaven  between  which  the 
life  of  man  is  lived.  Repose  and  a  reticent  dignity 
it  derives  from  the  fine  sweep  of  the  bounding 
lines.  Wherever  he  could  draw  a  line  Crome  could 
create  dignity.  Hence  the  significance  of  his 
death-bed  advice  to  his  son  :  "  John,  my  boy,  if 
your  subject  is  only  a  pigsty — dignify  it."  The 
trace  of  a  long  cut  is  visible  in  the  centre  of  the 
canvas  stretching  from  the  top  of  the  picture  to 
the  bottom.  This  is  the  result  of  the  vandalism  of 
a  picture  dealer  who,  doubtless  thinking  that  two 
small  Cromes  were  worth  more  than  one  large 
one,  divided  the  picture  into  two  parts.  The  two 
halves  were  sold  separately,  but  fortunately  they 

135 


THE   NATIONAL    GALLERY 

both  came  into  the  hands  of  a  collector  who 
reunited  them,  and  thus  saved  posterity  from  an 
irreparable  loss. 

The  magic  of  Crome  is  perhaps  even  more 
striking  in  the  desolate  grandeur  of  his  Welsh 
Slate  Quarries  (1037),  a  dreary  bare  hillside, 
swathed  with  drifting  shreds  of  cloud.  Grandeur 
of  this  sort,  springing  directly  from  the 
simple  verities  of  earth,  reduces  the  artificial 
dignity  of  Wilson's  Niobe's  Children  to  mere 
rodomontade.  Something  in  the  picture — the 
impressiveness  of  line,  the  economy  of  means, 
the  broad  wash  of  colour — recalls  the  Japanese, 
suggesting  kinship  with  that  other  supreme 
master  of  landscape,  Hokusai. 

"  I  feel  more  than  ever  convinced,"  Constable 
wrote  in  1803,  "that  one  day  or  other  I  shall 
paint  well ;  and  that  even  if  it  does  not  turn  to 
my  advantage  during  my  lifetime,  my  pictures 
will  be  handed  down  to  posterity."  Time  has 
verified  his  prediction,  for  it  is  safe  to  say  that 
to-day  The  Haywain  (1207)  and  The  Cornfield  (130) 
are  the  best-known  and  the  best-loved  of  all 
English  landscapes.  They  touch  a  chord  in  the 
popular  affection  which  few  other  works  can  reach. 
They  have  an  essentially  national  character.  Look- 

136 


The  Cornfield 

Constable 


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O 


THE   BRITISH   SCHOOL 

ing  at  these  vast  breathing  trees,  at  the  dewy 
greenness  of  the  grass,  at  the  blusteriug  cloudy 
skies — "great-coat  weather"  Ruskin  called  it — at 
the  brief  cold  bursts  of  sunshine,  at  the  clear,  sky- 
scattering  streams,  we  feel  that  this  is  just  that 
cool,  fresh,  robust  garden  which  is  England,  "  this 
other  Eden,  demi-paradise."   Not  only  is  the  sub- 
ject English,  but  also  the  way  of  seeing  it,  the 
representation  of  it,  is  marked  by  certain  qualities 
that  we  are  pleased  to  regard  as  typically  English, 
sinoerity,     independence,    vigour — as     Constable 
himself  expressed    it   in    homely    phrase,    "it    is 
without  fal-de-lal  and  fiddle-de-dee."   "When  I 
sit  down  before  a  scene  of  nature,  pencil  or  brush 
in  hand,"  he  said,  "my  first  care  is  to  forget  that 
I  have  ever  seen  a  picture  before."  The  fact  that  he 
forgot  pictures  when  he  looked  at  nature  accounts 
for  the  absence  in  his  own  landscapes  of  that  old 
convention  of  the  classical  landscape,  the  brown 
tree.    It  is   said    that   Constable   once    found  Sir 
George  Beaumont  in  difficulties  over  a  landscape. 
His  trouble  was  that  he  could  not  make  up  his 
mind  where  to  put  his  brown  tree,  without  which 
tradition  taught  that  no  landscape  was  complete. 
Constable  simply  took  him  to   the   window  and 
showed    him    that   there    was   no   brown  tree  in 

137 


THE   NATIONAL   GALLERY 

nature,  a  fact  which  he  had  until  then  not  taken 
into  account.  Constable  seems  to  have  felt  that 
the  study  of  the  old  masters  might  tend  to  repress 
the  individuality  of  the  artist  and  perpetuate  the 
tyranny  of  tradition,  and  this  fear  no  doubt 
led  him  to  doubt  the  wisdom  of  establishing 
a  National  Gallery  of  pictures  when  the  idea  was 
first  projected. 

Four  characteristic  works  illustrate  the  naive 
simplicity  and  truth  of  George  Morland's  scenes 
of  rustic  life.  The  best  of  them,  The  Inside  of  a 
Stable  (1030),  which  is  usually  considered  to  be 
his  masterpiece,  shows  his  skill  in  grouping 
animals  and  figures  in  the  easy  casual  positions  of 
ordinary  life,  and  his  almost  intuitive  know- 
ledge of  the  horse.  The  extraordinary  fluency 
of  his  touch  gives  the  picture  the  freedom 
and  spontaneity  of  a  sketch. 

Turner  occupies  a  unique  position  in  his 
relations  with  the  National  Gallery.  "  We  have 
had,  living  with  us,  and  painting  for  us,  the 
greatest  painter  of  all  time,"  said  Ruskin,  in 
one  of  his  more  than  usually  uncritical  outbursts 
of  enthusiasm,  "  a  man  with  whose  supremacy  of 
power  no  intellect  of  past  ages  can  be  put  in 
comparison  for  a  moment."   Turner  was  not  in- 

138 


THE   BRITISH    SCHOOL 

frequently  embarrassed  by  Ruskin's  superlatives, 
but  at  the  same  time  he  had  a  confident  assurance 
of  the  greatness  of  his  own  genius.  The  fastidious 
precautions  which  he  took  to  perpetuate  his  own 
fame  after  his  death  show  at  the  same  time  his 
belief  that  he  was  great  enough  to  deserve  to  be 
remembered  together   with  a  fear  lest  posterity 
might  forget  him  unless  he  himself  took  good  care 
that   it    should    not.    With    this   view    he    left   a 
thousand  pounds  for  the  erection  of  a  monument 
to  himself  in    St    Paul's   Cathedral,  and   he   be- 
queathed all   his  finished  pictures  to  the  nation 
"  provided  that  a  room  or  rooms  are  added  to  the 
present  National   Gallery,  to   be,  when   erected, 
called   Turner's    Gallery."    Two    of    his    pictures 
were  given,  as  has  already  been   mentioned,  on 
condition  that  they  should  hang  side  by  side  with 
two  of  Claude's.  This  bequest  amounted  to  more 
than  a  hundred  oil  paintings  and  some  nineteen 
thousand  drawings.   The  work   of   classifying  the 
drawings  and  arranging  a  selection  of  them   for 
exhibition  was   undertaken  by  Ruskin.  The  bulk 
of  them  remain  in  the  basement  of  the  building 
in  Trafalgar  Square,  where  selections  of  them  are 
exhibited  in  rotation ;  some  are  lent  to  provincial 
galleries.    The   stipulation   for  the  addition  of  a 

*39 


THE   NATIONAL    GALLERY 

" Turner  Gallery"  was  in  time  duly  carried  out, 
and  in  186l  all  the  pictures  were  hung  in  the 
National  Gallery.  Within  the  last  few  years, 
however,  a  new  Turner  wing  has  been  added  to 
the  National  Gallery  of  British  Art  on  the  Mill- 
bank  Embankment,  better  known  as  the  Tate 
Gallery,  where  the  greater  part  of  the  Turner 
Collection  has  now  been  removed.  About  a  score 
of  pictures,  representing  his  early,  middle  and 
later  periods,  have  been  left  at  Trafalgar  Square. 
The  Boat's  Crew  recovering  an  Anchor  (481)  and 
the  Orange  Merchantman  going  to  Pieces  on  the  Bar 
(501)  are  examples  of  the  grey-brown  sea-pieces 
of  his  first  period,  inspired  by  Vandevelde  and 
the  Dutch  sea  painters.  Childe  Harold's  Pilgrimage 
(5l6),  a  glorious  summary  of  Italy,  shows  his  art 
in  its  maturity,  when  he  had  given  up  emulating 
the  older  masters  and,  unmindful  of  schools  and 
formulas,  let  the  light  and  colour  of  the  actual 
world  illuminate  his  canvases.  And  of  his  later 
eolden  visions  of  a  more  dreamlike  world  than 
this  there  remain  the  "  Sun  of  Venice  "  going  to  Sea 
(535)  and  Returning  from  the  Ball  (544),  their 
splendour  faded,  but  beautiful  in  their  decay. 


140 


INDEX 

Angerstein,  John  Julius,   13 

Angelico,  Fra  :   The  Resurrection  (663),  32 

Armstrong,  Sir  William,  59,  63,  65,  68,  96 

Beaumont,  Sir  George,  13,  14,  137 

Bellini,  Giovanni,  45  ;  Chrisfs  Agony  in  the  Garden  (726), 

46  ;  Death  of  St  Peter  Martyr  (812),  46  ;  Doge  Loredano 

(189),  47  ;    Virgin  and  Child  (280),  47 
Botticelli,  Sandro,  35  ;  Head  of  a   Young  Man  (626),  35  ; 

Mars  and  Venus  (915),  35  ;  Madonna  and  Child  (275), 

36  ;  Nativity  (1034),  36 
Boudin  :  Harbour  at  Trouville  (2078),  1 14 
Boxall,  Sir  William,  20-21 
Burton,  Sir  Frederic,  21-22 

Canaletto  :  View  on  the  Grand  Canal  (163),  55  ;   View  of 

Venice  (127),  55 
Carpaccio,  43 
Catena  :   Warrior  adoring  the  Infant  Christ  (234),  48  ;  St 

Jerome  in  his  Study  (694),  48 
Chardin  :  Still  Life  (1258),  no 
Cimabue  :  Madonna  (565),  30 

Claude,  14,  106  ;  Embarkation  of  Queen  of  Sheba  (14),  107 
Constable:  The  Haywain  (1207),  136;   The  Corttfi eld (130), 

136 
Corot :  The  Bent  Tree  (2625),  113  ;    Wood  Gatherers  (2627), 

"3 

Correggio ;  Education   of  Cupid  (10),   53;    Virgin   of  the 

Basket  (23),  53 
Crivelli,  44  ;  Annunciation  (739),  45 
Crome,   John:    Poringland  Oak  (2674),    134;    Mousehold 

Heath  (689),  135;  Welsh  Slate  Quarries  (1037),  136 

l4I 


INDEX 

Cuyp  :  Evening  (53),  72  ;  Large  Dort  (961),  72 

Diaz  :  Sunny  Days  in  the  Forest  (2058),  113  ;  The  Storm 

(2632),  113 
Dou,  Gerard  :  The  Poulterer's  Shop  (825),  68 
Duccio  :  Transfiguration  (1330),  31 
Durer  :  Portrait  of  his  Father  (1938),  88J 
Dyck,    Anthony    van:      Charles    the    First    (1172),    86; 

Cornelius  van  der  Geest  (52),  87 

Eastlake,  Sir  Charles,  19,  20 

Eyck,  Jan  van  :  Jan  Arnolfini  and  Wife  (186),  77 

Fantin-Latour,  114 

Francesca,  Piero  della :  Baptism  of  Christ  (665),  39 ; 
Nativity  (908),  39 

Gainsborough  :  Mrs  Siddons  (683),  127  ;  The  Painter's 
Daughters  (181 1),  128;  Miss  Gainsborough  (1482),  128  ; 
Musidora  (308),  129;  The  Market  Carl '(80),  133;  The 
Watering  Place  (109),  133;  Wood  Scene  (925),  134 

Giorgione,  43,  48 

Giotto,  school  of:  Two  Apostles  (276),  31 

Goya:  Dr  Peral  (1951),  103;  Isabel  Corbo  de  Porcel 
(1473),  103 

Greco,  El  :  Christ  driving  the  Traders  out  of  the  Temple 
(1457).  93  5  St  Jerome  (1122),  93 

Greuze,  no  ;  Girl  with  an  Apple  (1020),  in 

Guardi:  S.  Maria  della  Salute  (209S),  56;  View  through  an 
Archway  (1058),  56 

Hals,  Frans  :  Family  Portrait (2285),  70;  Man's  Portrait 

(1251),  70 
Hobbema  :  The  Avenue  (830),  7 1 
Hogarth,   William,    117;  Marriage  a   la  Mode   (113-118), 

118  ;  Servants  (1374),  121  ;  Shrimp  Girl  (1162),  121 
Holbein,  88;  Ambassadors  {1314),  89;  Christina  of  Denmark 

(2475).  90 
Holroyd,  Sir  Charles,  23,  29,  45 

142 


INDEX 

Hooch,  Pieter  de,  64 ;  A  Dutch  Interior  (834),  65 

Lawrence,  Sir  Thomas,  130;  /. /.  Anger  stein  (129),  131; 

Mrs  Siddons  (785),  131 
Lenain  :  Portrait  Group  (1425),  109 

Mabuse  :  A  Man  and  Wife  (1689),  79;  Adoration  of  the 

Kings  (2790),  80 
Masaccio,  31 

Metsu  :  Music  Lesson  (839),  66 
Michael  Angelo  :  Entombment  (790),  38  ;     Madonna  and 

Child,  (809),  39 
Moretto,  54 

Morland,  George  :  Inside  of  a  Stable  (1030),  138 
Moroni,  54 
Murillo,    101  ;  A  Boy  Drinking  (1286),  102 

Peel,  Sir  Robert,  57-59 

Perugino  :    Virgin  and  Child  (28S),  40 

Phillips,  Sir  Claude,  121 

Pitti  Collection,  18 

Pollaiuolo:  .SV  Sebastian  (292),  34 

Poussin,  Nicholas,  106 

Poynter,  Sir  Edward,  22,  49,  77 

Raphael:   Ansidei  Madonna  (1171),  21,  40;  Julius   II. 

(27),  42 
Rembrandt :    J  Toman  taken  in  Adultery  (45),  60 ;  Adoration 

of  the  Shepherds  (47),  61  ;  portraits,  62-63 
Rembrandt,  school  of:  Christ  blessing  Little  Children  (757), 

21 
Reni,  Guido,   15 
Reynolds,  Sir  Joshua,  50,  122-126;  Graces  decorating  a  Statue 

of  Hymen  (79),  125  ;  Lady  Cockburn  (2077),  125  ;  Anne, 

Countess  Albemarle  (1259),   126;   Mrs  Musters  (891), 

126;  Dr  Johnson  (887),  126;  Lord  Heathfi eld  (in),  126 

Romney :    Mrs  Mark  Currie  (165 1 ),   129;    I'he  Parson's 

Daughter  (1068),  129  ;    Lady  Hamilton  (312),  130 

M3 


INDEX 

Rubens  :  Abduction  of  Sabine  Women  (38),  81  ;  Triumph  of 
Silenus  (853),  82  ;  Blessings  of  Peace  (46),  83  ;  Chapeau 
de  Poil  (852),  83  ;  Chateau  de  Stein  (66),  84 

Ruskin,  15,  25,  27,47,  71,  138 

Ruysdael,  72 

Steen,  Jan  :  Interior  (1378),  67 
Strong,  Arthur,  61 ,  71 

Terburg  :  Peace  of  Milnster  (896),  68 

Tiepolo,  43 

Tintoretto  :  Origin  of  the  Milky  Way  (1314)1  53 

Titian  :  Bacchus  and  Ariadne  (35),  49  ;  Portrait  of  Ariosto 

(1944).  51 
Turner,  138-140;  Dido  building  Carthage  (498),  107 

Uccello,  Paulo  ;  Battle  of  Sanf  Egidio  (583),  33 

Velazquez,  95;  Wild  Boar  Hunt  (197),  97;  Philip  IV. 
(745),  99  ;    Venus  and  Cupid  (2057),  100  ;  Las  Lanzas, 

33>  68 
Veronese:  Family  of  Darius  (294),  51;  allegories,  52  ;  Vision 

of  St  Helena  (1041),  52 
Vinci,  Leonardo  da  :  Our  Lady  of  the  Rocks  (1093),  37 

Wilson,  Richard,  131  ;  Niobe's  Children  (no),  132;  Villa 
of  Mcecenas  (108),  132 

ZURBARAN  :  Franciscan  Monk  (230),  94  ;  Adoration  of  the 
Shepherds  (232),  95  ;  Lady  as  St  Margaret  (1930),  95 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 

Los  Angeles 

This  book  is  DUE  on  the  last  date  stamped  below. 


JUN  1 2  1951  i 


m  L9-25m-8,'46( 9852)  444 


i  r>c    AMT.F.1.KS 


! 


070  Flitch  - 
F64n  The  National 


^SOUTHERN  REGIONAL  LIBRARY  FACILITY 


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JUN  I  2  195f 

1 

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N 

1070 

FG4n 


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■   :    1KB  1  II 


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